Judgment — ECLI:EU:C:2008:141
Date: 2008-03-06
Language of the case: German
Court formation: First Chamber
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Freedom to provide services
Concepts: The various services
Procedure: Reference for a preliminary ruling
Origin: Germany

Summary of the Judgment Freedom to provide services – Community postal services – Directive 97/67 – Services reserved to universal postal service providers (European Parliament and Council Directive 97/67, Art. 12, fifth indent) The fifth indent of Article 12 of Directive 97/67 on common rules for the development of the internal market of Community postal services and the improvement of quality of service, as amended by Directive 2002/39, which imposes on Member States the obligation to take steps to ensure that the tariffs for each of the services forming part of the provision of the universal service comply with the principles of transparency and non-discrimination, and provides that those tariffs are, together with the associated conditions, to apply equally both as between different third parties and as between third parties and universal service providers supplying equivalent services, must be interpreted as precluding refusal to apply to businesses which consolidate, on a commercial basis and in their own name, postal items from various senders the special tariffs which the national universal postal service provider grants, within the scope of its exclusive licence, to business customers for the deposit of minimum quantities of pre-sorted mail at its sorting offices. An activity such as the collection by intermediaries at the premises of various senders of postal items, their pre-sorting and transport to access points does not fall within the field which may be reserved to the universal postal service provider under Article 7(1) of Directive 97/67, with the consequence that that provision cannot be relied upon to justify treatment of the intermediaries concerned which is different from that enjoyed by the business customers of that company. Moreover, while it is true that the fifth indent of Article 12 of that directive is not intended to determine the question of principle whether a universal postal service provider is or is not obliged to grant access to the postal chain under conditions and at points different from those which apply to the traditional service for letter post, it nevertheless follows from the wording of that provision that it imposes on the Member States a strict obligation to apply the principles of transparency and non-discrimination where such access to special tariffs is in fact granted by that provider. (see paras 27-28, 31, 35, 41, 44, operative part)