European Union – Freedom of movement. The proceedings concerned the determination of the amount of maternity benefit to be granted to the applicant by the respondent State Social Insurance Agency, Latvia, in circumstances where the applicant had been employed by an EU institution and had not been registered as an employed worker in Latvia during that period. The Court of Justice of the European Union gave a preliminary ruling, deciding that art 45 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union precluded national legislation that used a method of calculation to determine the maternity benefit that had the effect of substantially reducing the amount of the maternity benefit granted to that person in comparison with the amount to which she would have been entitled had she been gainfully employed in that member state alone.