Judgment — ECLI:EU:C:2010:435
Date: 2010-07-15
Language of the case: Danish
Court formation: Third Chamber
Subject matter: Free movement of goods;Customs Union
Procedure: Reference for a preliminary ruling
Origin: Denmark

Summary of the Judgment Customs union – External transit procedure (Council Regulation No 2913/92, Art. 204(1)(a)) Article 204(1)(a) of Council Regulation No 2913/92 establishing the Community Customs Code, as amended by Regulation No 648/2005, is to be interpreted as not applying to a situation where an authorised consignor generated by mistake two external transit procedures for one and the same consignment of goods, because the goods covered by the extra procedure do not exist and, as a consequence, that procedure cannot entail the creation of a customs debt pursuant to the above provision. In that regard, an error consisting in generating two transit procedures for one and the same consignment of goods is not by nature liable to undermine the objectives pursued by Article 204 of the Customs Code and justify the creation of a customs debt. In the first place, as regards the objective of preventing the risk of non-Community goods being introduced into the economic networks of the European Union, it is clear that, where an external transit customs procedure is generated for non-existent goods, there is no risk that the goods will end up forming part of those economic networks without having been cleared through customs, which might lead to unfair competition and the loss of tax revenue. In the second place, the objective of ensuring that the rules of the customs procedure in question are diligently applied cannot be undermined in the case of an external transit procedure which does not relate to existing goods: it is not possible to implement such a procedure correctly when it is applied to goods which do not exist. This is particularly true in view of the fact that the obligation to present the goods at the customs office of destination, in a case where the goods covered by the mistakenly generated transit procedure do not exist, would amount to imposing on the principal – contrary to the maxim ultra posse nemo obligatur – a duty which it cannot discharge. (see paras 32-34, 37-38, operative part)