Opinion of the Advocate General — ECLI:EU:C:1997:223
Date: 1997-04-29
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Financial provisions;Own resources
Procedure: Reference for a preliminary ruling
Origin: Denmark

Summary of the Judgment
Own resources of the European Communities — Community aid unduly paid — Recovery —
Application of national law — Rule permitting certain criteria to be taken into account in order
to exclude recovery — Whether permissible — Conditions
Community law does not in principle pre­
clude a national rule from allowing non-
recovery of Community aid unduly paid,
regard being had to criteria such as negli­
gence on the part of the national authorities
and the fact that a considerable period of
time has elapsed since the payment of the aid
in question, on condition that the good faith
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SUMMARY — CASE C-366/95
of the recipient is established and provided
that the same conditions apply as for the
recovery of purely national payments and
that the interests of the Community are fully
taken into account. However, fault on the
part of a third party with whom the recipient
of the aid has entered into a contract consti­
tutes an ordinary commercial risk and con­
cerns more closely the sphere of the recipient
of the aid than that of the Community.
As regards, more specifically, the condition
relating to the good faith of the recipient,
where an exporter draws up and submits a
declaration, with a view to obtaining export
refunds, which proves to be inaccurate, the
mere fact of having prepared that document
cannot deprive him of the right to plead his
good faith if the declaration is based exclus­
ively on information, provided by the other
party to a contract, the accuracy of which he
was unable to establish. Likewise, in circum­
stances where implementation of checks on
the manufacturing process and the raw mate­
rials used by a third party supplier, for the
purposes of ascertaining the quality of the
goods, would constitute an obligation dis­
proportionate to the objective pursued,
Community law cannot make the exporter's
right to plead his good faith as regards the
conformity of the goods with the description
given by him conditional upon him carrying
out such checks, unless there are specific rea­
sons to doubt that the content of the declara­
tion is accurate or special circumstances,
such as abnormally low prices or the size of
the exporter undertakings' profit margin.
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