The Case

European Union Insurance. of Council Directive (EEC) 72-166 should be interpreted as meaning that the concept of 'use of vehicles', referred to in that provision, did not cover a situation in which an agricultural tractor had been involved in an accident when its principal function, at the time of that accident, had not been to serve as a means of transport but to generate, as a machine for carrying out work, the motive power necessary to drive the pump of a herbicide sprayer. The Court of Justice of the European Union so held in a preliminary ruling in proceedings brought by the applicants following a court ruling ordering them to pay compensation for the loss suffered by the first respondent as a result of his wife's death following an accident involving an agricultural tractor, which had occurred on the farm on which she had been working.