The Court of Justice of the European Communities

principle but actually endowed those subject to it with rights which national courts were obliged to safeguard. It stressed that it was the duty of these Courts to ensure protection of the right to equal pay, notably in cases of discrimination directly resulting from legal provisions or collective agreements and in cases where men and women doing the same work in the same private or public undertaking or service are paid at different rates. According to the Court equal pay should have been fully guaranteed by the original Member States with effect from January 1962-the beginning of the second stage of the transition period--and by the new Member States from January 1973, when the Act of Accession came into force . To avoid a flood of application for retroactive compensation and the economic upheaval that this would entail, it ruled that , with the exception of rt consisted of nine judges, four advocates general and the Registrar