Judgment_paragraph 91 · Alessandro Accorinti and Others v European Central Bank (T-79/13)

91Consequently, it must be held that the applicants, as investors or savers who acted on their own behalf and in their exclusively private interest to obtain the maximum return on their investments, were in a different situation from that of the Eurosystem central banks. Although, under the applicable private law, when purchasing State bonds those central banks, like the private investors, acquired the status of creditors of the issuing and debtor State, that single point in common cannot justify their being regarded as being in a comparable, or indeed identical, situation to that of those investors. In fact, such an approach, taken solely from the viewpoint of private law, does not take account of either the legal framework of the operation involving the purchase of those bonds by the central banks or the public-interest objectives which those banks were called upon to pursue in that context under the applicable rules of primary law, the principles and objectives of which must be taken into consideration when assessing the comparability of the situations in question in the light of the general principle of equal treatment (see the case-law cited in paragraph point 87 above).