ddrg/super_eurlex huggingface dataset:
6

Title II, Chapter II of that directive includes Section 2, entitled ‘Provisions to ensure investor protection’, which in turn comprises Article 19, entitled ‘Conduct of business obligations when providing investment services to clients’. According to Article 19(4) to (6) and (9): ‘4. When providing investment advice or portfolio management the investment firm shall obtain the necessary information regarding the client’s or potential client’s knowledge and experience in the investment field relevant to the specific type of product or service, his financial situation and his investment objectives so as to enable the firm to recommend to the client or potential client the investment services and financial instruments that are suitable for him. 5. Member States shall ensure that investment firms, when providing investment services other than those referred to in paragraph 4, ask the client or potential client to provide information regarding his knowledge and experience in the investment field relevant to the specific type of product or service offered or demanded so as to enable the investment firm to assess whether the investment service or product envisaged is appropriate for the client. In case the investment firm considers, on the basis of the information received under the previous subparagraph, that the product or service is not appropriate to the client or potential client, the investment firm shall warn the client or potential client. This warning may be provided in a standardised format. In cases where the client or potential client elects not to provide the information referred to under the first subparagraph, or where he provides insufficient information regarding his knowledge and experience, the investment firm shall warn the client or potential client that such a decision will not allow the firm to determine whether the service or product envisaged is appropriate for him. This warning may be provided in a standardised format. 6. Member States shall allow investment firms when providing investment services that only consist of execution and/or the reception and transmission of client orders with or without ancillary services to provide those investment services to their clients without the need to obtain the information or make the determination provided for in paragraph 5 where all the following conditions are met: — the services referred to in the introductory part relate to shares admitted to trading on a regulated market or in an equivalent third-country market, money market instruments, bonds or other forms of securitised debt (excluding those bonds or securitised debt that embed a derivative), UCITS and other non-complex financial instruments. … … 9. In cases where an investment service is offered as part of a financial product which is already subject to other provisions of Community legislation or common European standards related to credit institutions and consumer credits with respect to risk assessment of clients and/or information requirements, this service shall not be additionally subject to the obligations set out in this Article.’
10

Article 17 of the regulation, which governs direct taking of evidence by the requesting court, provides: ‘1. Where a court requests to take evidence directly in another Member State, it shall submit a request to the central body or the competent authority referred to in Article 3(3) in that State, using form I in the Annex. 2. Direct taking of evidence may only take place if it can be performed on a voluntary basis without the need for coercive measures. Where the direct taking of evidence implies that a person shall be heard, the requesting court shall inform that person that the performance shall take place on a voluntary basis. 3. The taking of evidence shall be performed by a member of the judicial personnel or by any other person such as an expert, who will be designated, in accordance with the law of the Member State of the requesting court. 4. Within 30 days of receiving the request, the central body or the competent authority of the requested Member State shall inform the requesting court if the request is accepted and, if necessary, under what conditions according to the law of its Member State such performance is to be carried out, using form J. In particular, the central body or the competent authority may assign a court of its Member State to take part in the performance of the taking of evidence in order to ensure the proper application of this Article and the conditions that have been set out. The central body or the competent authority shall encourage the use of communications technology, such as videoconferences and teleconferences. 5. The central body or the competent authority may refuse direct taking of evidence only if: (a) the request does not fall within the scope of this Regulation as set out in Article 1; or (b) the request does not contain all of the necessary information pursuant to Article 4; or (c) the direct taking of evidence requested is contrary to fundamental principles of law in its Member State. 6. Without prejudice to the conditions laid down in accordance with paragraph 4, the requesting court shall execute the request in accordance with the law of its Member State.’
10

Article 7(1) to (3) of the Convention of 5 June 2001 between the Kingdom of Belgium and the Kingdom of the Netherlands for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of tax evasion in respect of taxes on income and capital (Belgisch Staatsblad of 20 December 2002, p. 57533; ‘the Belgium-Netherlands Convention’) provide: ‘1. The profits of an enterprise of a Contracting State shall be taxable only in that State unless the enterprise carries on business in the other Contracting State through a permanent establishment situated therein. If the enterprise carries on business as aforesaid, the profits of the enterprise may be taxed in the other State but only so much of them as is attributable to that permanent establishment. 2. Subject to the provisions of paragraph 3, where an enterprise of a Contracting State carries on business in the other Contracting State through a permanent establishment situated therein, there shall in each Contracting State be attributed to that permanent establishment the profits which it might be expected to make if it were a distinct and separate enterprise engaged in the same or similar activities under the same or similar conditions and dealing wholly independently with the enterprise of which it is a permanent establishment. 3. In determining the profits of a permanent establishment, there shall be allowed as deductions expenses which are incurred for the purposes of the permanent establishment, including executive and general administrative expenses so incurred, whether in the State in which the permanent establishment is situated or elsewhere.’
3

In Chapter 3 of Title XII of the VAT Directive, ‘Special scheme for travel agents’, Articles 306 to 310, in the Spanish language version, provide: ‘Article 306 1. Member States shall apply a special VAT scheme, in accordance with this Chapter, to transactions carried out by travel agents who deal with customers [“viajero”] in their own name and use supplies of goods or services provided by other taxable persons, in the provision of travel facilities. This special scheme shall not apply to travel agents where they act solely as intermediaries and to whom point (c) of the first paragraph of Article 79 applies for the purposes of calculating the taxable amount. 2. For the purposes of this Chapter, tour operators shall be regarded as travel agents. Article 307 Transactions made, in accordance with the conditions laid down in Article 306, by the travel agent in respect of a journey shall be regarded as a single service supplied by the travel agent to the traveller [“viajero”]. The single service shall be taxable in the Member State in which the travel agent has established his business or has a fixed establishment from which the travel agent has carried out the supply of services. Article 308 The taxable amount and the price exclusive of VAT, within the meaning of point (8) of Article 226, in respect of the single service provided by the travel agent shall be the travel agent’s margin, that is to say, the difference between the total amount, exclusive of VAT, to be paid by the traveller [“viajero”] and the actual cost to the travel agent of supplies of goods or services provided by other taxable persons, where those transactions are for the direct benefit of the traveller [“viajero”]. Article 309 If transactions entrusted by the travel agent to other taxable persons are performed by such persons outside the Community, the supply of services carried out by the travel agent shall be treated as an intermediary activity exempted pursuant to Article 153. If the transactions are performed both inside and outside the Community, only that part of the travel agent’s service relating to transactions outside the Community may be exempted. Article 310 VAT charged to the travel agent by other taxable persons in respect of transactions which are referred to in Article 307 and which are for the direct benefit of the traveller [“viajero”] shall not be deductible or refundable in any Member State.’
Directive 1999/70 concerning the framework agreement on fixed-term work concluded by ETUC, UNICE and CEEP, and Framework Agreement itself, set out in the Annex to that directive, must be interpreted as not applying either to the fixed-term employment relationship between a temporary worker and a temporary employment business or to the employment relationship between such a worker and a user undertaking.

In fact, it is explicitly stated in the fourth paragraph of the preamble to the Framework Agreement, reflected in clause 3(1) of the Framework Agreement, that it does not apply to fixed-term workers placed by a temporary work agency at the disposition of a user enterprise, it being the intention of the parties to conclude a similar agreement relating to temporary agency work. Regulation of temporary agency work is precisely the purpose behind Directive 2008/104 on temporary agency work, which, as evidenced by recitals 5 and 7 in the preamble thereto, was adopted by the EU legislature following the failure of negotiations between the social partners to conclude such an agreement.

(see paras 36, 39, 42, 45, operative part)
Article 2(2)(f) of Directive 2006/123 on services in the internal market must be interpreted as meaning that the exclusion of healthcare services from the scope of that directive covers any activity intended to assess, maintain or restore the state of health of patients, where that activity is carried out by healthcare professionals recognised as such by the Member State concerned, regardless of the ways in which the facilities in which that care is provided are organised and financed or whether they are public or private. It is for the national court to ascertain whether day-care centres and night-care centres are excluded from the scope of that directive, having regard to the nature of the activities carried out by the healthcare professionals in those centres and whether those activities constitute a principal part of the services offered by those centres.

(see para. 53, operative part)
A ‘health claim’ within the meaning of Article 2(2)(5) of Regulation No 1924/2006 on nutrition and health claims made on foods is the relationship that must exist between a food or one of its constituents and health; that definition provides no information as to whether that relationship must be direct or indirect, or as to its intensity or duration, so that the term ‘relationship’ must be understood in a broad sense.

In that context, paragraph 6 of that provision does not require that such a claim expressly states that the consumption of a food significantly reduces a risk factor in the development of a human disease. It is sufficient that that claim may give the average consumer who is reasonably well informed and reasonably observant and circumspect the impression that the reduction of a risk factor is significant.

(see paras 22, 24, 26, operative part 1)
Article 2(1) of Directive 93/37 concerning the coordination of procedures for the award of public works contracts requires contracting authorities to comply with the directive where they subsidise directly by more than 50% a works contract awarded by an entity other than themselves.

Since the concept of a subsidy within the meaning of that provision is not defined in Directive 93/37, it must, in the absence of reference to the law of the Member States, be given an autonomous and uniform interpretation, taking into account the context of and the objective pursued by the provision in which it appears.

The term ‘to subsidise’, in its usual sense, means quite simply to grant an advantage. Therefore, the term is not limited, as a general rule, to positive benefits. Doubt is not cast on this interpretation by any ‘traditional’ definition of the concept of a subsidy, which is allegedly applied in the field of State aid. Furthermore, the use of the term ‘subsidise’ in that provision and not the verb ‘finance’ used by the Commission in its proposal for Article 1a in Directive 89/440, a provision which corresponds to Article 2 of Directive 93/37, cannot, in the absence of other indications, be sufficient to infer an intention on the part of the European Union legislature to restrict that term solely to positive subsidies, to the exclusion, in particular, of tax deductions. Finally, it follows clearly from the wording of Article 2(1) of Directive 93/37 that the concept of a direct subsidy relates not to the persons, but to the work concerned. A narrow interpretation of that concept would, indeed, enable a contracting authority to circumvent Article 2 of Directive 93/37 and thereby to its escape its obligations under that directive.

As regards the concept of facilities intended for sports, recreation and leisure within the meaning of Article 2(2) of Directive 93/37, a limitation of that concept to facilities which are intended to meet the users’ collective needs results neither from the wording of Directive 93/37 nor from the latter’s travaux préparatoires. Article 2(2) of Directive 93/37 does not qualify the concept of facilities intended for sports, recreation and leisure in any way. Nor can such a limitation of that concept be founded on a systemic interpretation of Article 2(2) of Directive 93/37. Even if all the categories of contracts that are set out in that provision have the common feature that they relate to buildings capable, where appropriate, of meeting the users’ collective needs, it cannot be inferred from this fact alone that the ability to satisfy such needs constitutes a condition for the application of that provision.

(see paras 42, 44, 46, 48, 52, 75-77)
Article 43 EC must be interpreted as not precluding legislation of a Member State under which a motor vehicle, which is registered and is already the subject of taxation as a result of its registration in another Member State, is the subject of a tax when it is first used on the national road network, where that vehicle is intended, essentially, to be actually used on a long-term basis in both those Member States or is, in fact, used in that manner, as long as that tax is not discriminatory.

In the absence of harmonisation of the taxation of motor vehicles at EU level, the Member States are free to exercise their powers of taxation in that area provided that they do so in compliance with EU law. Therefore, a Member State may impose a registration tax on a motor vehicle registered in another Member State where that vehicle is intended to be used essentially in the first Member State on a permanent basis or where it is, in fact, used in that manner.

Moreover, in that context, the disadvantages which could arise from the parallel exercise of tax competences by different Member States, to the extent that such an exercise is not discriminatory, do not constitute restrictions of the freedom of movement. A disadvantage is not discriminatory where each resident of the Member State in which the vehicle is not registered, whether employed or not, or self-employed is subject to that tax either when a motor vehicle is registered in that State’s vehicle register or when such a vehicle, registered in another Member State, is first used on the road network in the first Member State.

(see paras 23, 24, 28, 30, 32, operative part)
Article 45 TFEU and Article 7(1) of Regulation No 492/2011 on freedom of movement for workers within the Union must be interpreted as precluding national legislation under which, in determining the reference date for the purposes of the advancement of an employee of a local or regional authority to the next pay step in his grade, account is to be taken of all uninterrupted periods of service completed with that authority, but of only a proportion of any other periods of service.

Such legislation is liable to restrict freedom of movement for workers, an effect which is in principle prohibited by Article 45 TFEU and Article 7(1) of Regulation No 492/2011.

Legislation of that kind cannot be accepted unless it pursues one of the legitimate aims listed in the Treaty or is justified by overriding reasons in the public interest. Even so, application of that measure still has to be such as to ensure achievement of the objective in question and must not go beyond what is necessary for that purpose.

In that regard, even assuming that the legislation in question does indeed pursue an objective of rewarding workers’ loyalty to their employers, and even though such an objective may conceivably constitute an overriding reason in the public interest, given the characteristics of that legislation, the obstacle which it entails is not such as to ensure achievement of that objective, in so far as that legislation is intended to allow mobility within a group of distinct employers and not to reward the loyalty of an employee to a particular employer.

In addition, it is not possible to accept that the aim of administrative simplification, designed merely to reduce the public administration’s workload, inter alia by simplifying the calculations which that administration must carry out, constitutes an overriding reason in the public interest capable of justifying the restriction of a freedom so fundamental as the freedom of movement for workers guaranteed by Article 45 TFEU. Moreover, the fact that simplification of that kind makes it possible for administrative costs to be reduced is a purely economic consideration and in consequence cannot constitute an overriding reason in the public interest.

Lastly, in so far as the national legislation at issue is intended to ensure greater transparency in the determination of the reference date for the purposes of advancement to higher pay steps, that legislation in any event goes beyond what is necessary to achieve that aim: the desired transparency could be achieved through measures which do not restrict freedom of movement for workers, such as the establishment and publication or dissemination by appropriate means of predetermined and non‑discriminatory criteria for assessing the length of relevant professional experience for the purposes of advancement.

(see paras 35, 36, 38, 40, 42- 45, operative part)
Article 134(b) of Directive 2006/112 on the common system of value added tax must be interpreted as not excluding from the exemption in Article 132(1)(m) of that directive a supply of services consisting in the grant, by a non-profit-making body managing a golf course and offering a membership scheme, of the right to use that golf course to visiting non-members of that body.

Accordingly, the term ‘additional income’ within the meaning of Article 134(b) of Directive 2006/112 cannot be construed in such a way as to lead to a restriction of the scope of the exemption in Article 132(1)(m) of that directive on the basis of the status of the recipients of the abovementioned supply as members or non-members, a criterion that was deliberately excluded when the exemption was defined.

An interpretation of the term ‘additional income’ so as to cover the green fees paid for the use of a golf course by visiting non-members of a non-profit-making body managing that golf course and also offering a membership scheme, on the ground that those green fees are additional to the income from the subscriptions paid by the members of that body, would lead precisely to such a restriction of the scope of the exemption in Article 132(1)(m) of Directive 2006/112.

(see paras 29, 30, 32, operative part 1)
Case C‑450/12

HARK GmbH & Co KG Kamin- und Kachelofenbau

v

Hauptzollamt Duisburg

(Request for a preliminary ruling from the Finanzgericht Düsseldorf)

‛Common Customs Tariff — Tariff classification — Combined Nomenclature — Headings 7307 and 7321 — Stove pipe sets — Notions of ‘parts’ of stoves and ‘tube or pipe fittings’’

Summary — Judgment of the Court (Tenth Chamber), 12 December 2013

Customs union — Common Customs Tariff — Tariff headings — Stove pipe sets — Classification under heading 7321 of the Combined Nomenclature

(Council Regulation No 2658/87, Annex I)

The Combined Nomenclature in Annex I to Regulation No 2658/87 on the tariff and statistical nomenclature and on the Common Customs Tariff, as amended by Regulation No 1031/2008, must be interpreted as meaning that a stove pipe set which comprises a right-angled tubular elbow component in steel with an external diameter of 154 mm and external dimensions of 495 mm x 595 mm, which is covered in heat-resistant paint and has a closing flap to allow internal cleaning, a chimney connection and an appropriate surround, must be classified under CN heading 7321 as a part, in steel, of a stove.

In order to classify a stove pipe set as ‘parts’ of a stove, it is not sufficient to show that, without that article, the stove is not able to carry out its intended functions. It must be established that its mechanical or electric functioning is dependent on that article.

That article is intended exclusively for use with stoves and serves to connect the stove to the chimney flue. In the absence of such a connection, the stove could not be operated because flue gases would escape.

(see paras 36, 38, 44, operative part)
Article 107(1) TFEU must be interpreted as meaning that constitutes an intervention through State resources, a mechanism for offsetting in full the additional costs imposed on undertakings because of an obligation to purchase wind-generated electricity at a price higher than the market price that is financed by all final consumers of electricity in the national territory, where the amount of the charge imposed on each final consumer of electricity is determined annually by the public authorities of the Member State concerned; where if no decision is made by those authorities, the amount of the charge is increased automatically each year; and where an administrative penalty is provided for in the event of a consumer’s failure to pay the charge.

Funds financed through compulsory charges imposed by the legislation of a Member State, managed and apportioned in accordance with the provisions of that legislation, may be regarded as State resources within the meaning of Article 107(1) TFEU even if they are managed by entities separate from the public authorities. That applies in the case of a Caisse des dépôts et consignations, which, under a mandate from the State concerned, centralises the sums collected before paying them out to the operators concerned, thereby acting as an intermediary in the management of those funds; which may, in addition, invest the charges collected, deducting the remuneration from those investments from the amount of the charges payable for the following year; and which does not make any profits from that activity, while its management costs are set off against the charges paid by final consumers of electricity. In those circumstances, the sums thus managed must be regarded as remaining under public control.

(see paras 23-25, 28, 30-33, 37, operative part)