77In that regard, it must be observed that the right to take collective action for the protection of workers is a legitimate interest which, in principle, justifies a restriction of one of the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the Treaty (see, to that effect, Schmidberger, paragraph 74) and that the protection of workers is one of the overriding reasons of public interest recognised by the Court (see, inter alia, Joined Cases C-369/96 and C-376/96 Arblade and Others [1999] ECR I-8453, paragraph 36; Case C-165/98 Mazzoleni and ISA [2001] ECR I-2189, paragraph 27; and Joined Cases C-49/98, C-50/98, C-52/98 to C-54/98 and C-68/98 to C-71/98 Finalarte and Others [2001] ECR I-7831, paragraph 33).
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