28. In the operative part of Ruijssenaars and Others, the Court ruled that ‘Article 16 of [Regulation No 261/2004] must be interpreted as meaning that, where an individual complaint has been made by a passenger to the body designated by each Member State pursuant to Article 16(1) of the regulation following the refusal by an air carrier to pay to the passenger the compensation provided for in Article 7(1) of the regulation, that body is not required to take enforcement action against the carrier with a view to compelling it to pay the compensation’. (21)
29. That interpretation is based on three considerations which the Court set out as a first step in its reasoning. The first consideration concerns the actual wording of Article 16 of Regulation No 261/2004 (paragraphs 28 to 32 of Ruijssenaars and Others), the second the objectives of that regulation (paragraph 33 of Ruijssenaars and Others), and the third the allocation of the roles attributed, respectively, to the national bodies and the national courts (paragraph 35 of Ruijssenaars and Others). (2 2) That reasoning led the Court to conclude that the EU legislature did not impose on Member States the obligation to confer on their national bodies the power to take enforcement action against air carriers in order to secure payment of the compensation due to passengers. The Court held that such an interpretation made it possible to avoid any occurrence of different assessments that are detrimental to the rights of air passengers between, on the one hand, the national bodies responsible for handling individual complaints and, on the other, the national courts adjudicating on individual actions seeking compensation under Article 7 of Regulation No 261/2004 (paragraph 34 of Ruijssenaars and Others).
30. However, as a second step in its reasoning, the Court added an obiter dictum, as follows:
‘For that reason, in view of those objectives and the discretion enjoyed by Member States in the allocation of the powers with which they intend to endow the bodies referred to in Article 16(1) of Regulation No 261/2004, … it is open to Member States, in order to remedy inadequate protection for
air passengers, to empower the body referred to in Article 16(1) of the regulation to adopt measures in response to individual complaints.’ (2 3)