41The Court has also consistently held that the equal treatment rule laid down both in Article 45 TFEU and in Article 7 of Regulation No 1612/68 prohibits not only overt discrimination by reason of nationality but also all covert forms of discrimination which, by the application of other distinguishing criteria, lead in fact to the same result (see Case C-57/96 Meints [1997] ECR I-6689, paragraph 44; C-147/03 Commission v Austria [2005] ECR I-5969, paragraph 41; Case C-269/07 Commission v Germany [2009] ECR I-7811, paragraph 53; and Commission v Netherlands, paragraph 37).
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