ddrg/super_eurlex huggingface dataset:
Article 4(2) of Directive 93/13 on unfair terms in consumer contracts must be interpreted as meaning that the expression the ‘main subject-matter of a contract’ covers a term, incorporated in a loan agreement denominated in foreign currency concluded between a seller or supplier and a consumer and not individually negotiated, pursuant to which the selling rate of exchange of that currency is applied for the purpose of calculating the repayment instalments for the loan, only in so far as it is found, which it is for the national court to ascertain having regard to the nature, general scheme and stipulations of the contract and its legal and factual context, that that term lays down an essential obligation of that agreement which, as such, characterises it. Such a term, in so far as it contains a pecuniary obligation for the consumer to pay, in repayment of instalments of the loan, the difference between the selling rate of exchange and the buying rate of exchange of the foreign currency, cannot be considered as ‘remuneration’ the adequacy of which as consideration for a service supplied by the lender cannot be the subject of an examination as regards unfairness under Article 4(2) of Directive 93/13.

Taking account of the fact that Article 4(2) of Directive 93/13 represents a derogation and the ensuing necessity of its being interpreted strictly, contractual terms falling within the notion of the ‘main subject-matter of the contract’, within the meaning of that provision, must be understood as being those that lay down the essential obligations of the contract and, as such, characterise it. By contrast, terms ancillary to those that define the very essence of the contractual relationship cannot fall within the notion of the ‘main subject-matter of the contract’ within the meaning of that article.

In that connection, it is clear from the wording of Article 4(2) of that directive that the category of terms which concerns adequacy of the price and remuneration, on the one hand, as against the services or goods supplies in exchange, on the other which cannot be examined as regards unfairness is limited in scope, for that exclusion concerns only the adequacy of the price or remuneration as against the services or goods supplied in exchange.

Therefore, the exclusion of the assessment of the unfairness of a term being limited to the adequacy of the price and the remuneration on one hand as against the services or goods supplied on the other, it cannot apply where there is a challenge to the variation between the selling rate of exchange of a foreign currency, which must be used in accordance with that term in order to calculate the repayment instalments, and the buying rate of exchange of that currency, which must be used in accordance with other terms of the loan agreement in order to calculate the amount of the loan advanced.

(see paras 49, 50, 54, 57, 59, operative part 1)
Judgment of the Court (Seventh Chamber) of 20 March 2014 — Rousse Industry v Commission

(Case C‑271/13 P)

‛Appeal — State aid — Aid granted by the Republic of Bulgaria in the form of debt write-off — Commission decision declaring that aid incompatible with the internal market and ordering its recovery — Concept of ‘new aid’ — Duty to state reasons’

1. Judicial proceedings — Introduction of new pleas during the proceedings — Conditions — Treatment by the General Court — Procedures (Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Art. 48(2)) (see paras 19-22)

2. Judicial proceedings — Measures of organisation of procedure — Written questions put to the parties — No automatic effect on the outcome of the dispute — Freedom of the General Court in its absolute discretion to assess the facts and evidence (Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Arts 49, 64 and 65) (see para. 24)

3. State aid — Effect on trade between Member States — Adverse effect on competition — Criteria for assessment (Art. 107(1) TFEU) (see paras 42-44)

4. State aid — Examination by the Commission — Private creditor test — Complex evaluation of economic matters — Judicial review (Art. 107(1) TFEU) (see paras 57-59)

5. State aid — Commission decision — Assessment of the legality by reference to the information available at the time of adoption of the decision (Art. 107 TFEU) (see para. 67)

6. State aid — Recovery of unlawful aid — Calculation of the amount to be recovered — Difficulties encountered by the State — Obligation of the Commission and the Member State to cooperate — Scope (Arts 4(3) TEU and 108 TFEU; Council Regulation No 659/1999, Art. 14(1) and (2) (see paras 77-79)

7. Appeals — Grounds — Review by the Court of the assessment of the facts and evidence — Possible only where the clear sense of the evidence has been distorted (Art. 256(1) TFEU; Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 58, first para.) (see para. 81)

Re:

Appeal brought against the judgment of 20 March 2013 in Case T‑489/11 Rousse Industry v Commission, by which the General Court (Fourth Chamber) dismissed the action brought by the applicant for the annulment in part of Commission Decision 2012/706/EU of 13 July 2011 on the State aid SA.28903 (C 12/2010) (ex N 389/2009) implemented by Bulgaria in favour of Rousse Industry (OJ 2012 L 320, p. 27) — State aid in the form of debt write-off — Decision declaring that aid incompatible with the internal market and ordering its recovery — Infringement of procedural rules adversely affecting the rights of the applicant — Infringement of EU law by the General Court.

Operative part:

The Court:

1. Dismisses the appeal;
Keywords

Summary



Keywords

Harmonisation of fiscal legislation — Common system of value added tax — Deduction of input tax — Supply of goods — Definition — Goods under a financial leasing contract — Non-recovery of those goods by the leasing company after the termination of the contract — Not included — Possibility of the administration to require adjustment

(Council Directive 2006/112, Arts 16, 18 and 184 to 186)

Summary

Articles 16 and 18 of Directive 2006/112 on the common system of value added tax must be interpreted as meaning that the impossibility, for a leasing company, of recovering from the lessee the goods let under a financial leasing contract following its termination as a result of the lessee’s breach, despite the steps undertaken by that company to recover those goods and despite the lack of any consideration following such termination, may not be treated as a supply of goods for consideration for the purposes of those articles.

Such an impossibility does not fall within any of the situations referred to in Article 16. First, the goods in question cannot be regarded as being intended for the private use of the taxable person or of his staff, since they are not in their possession. Secondly, the fact that the lessee remains in possession of those goods without providing any form of consideration is the result of the lessee’s allegedly wrongful conduct and not of the disposal free of charge of those goods by the lessor in favour of the lessee. Thirdly, the goods cannot be considered as being applied for purposes other than those of the business of the taxable person, since their hiring out and thus being made available for the use of the lessee constitute the very essence of the economic activity of the lessor. The fact that the lessor does not actually recover those goods after the termination of the financial leasing contract in no way means that he has applied them for purposes other than those of his business. Lastly, Article 18 does not apply in such a situation either.

However, those considerations do not affect any right of the tax authorities to require adjustment on the part of a taxable person under the conditions prescribed in that regard in Directive 2006/112. The adjustment provided for in Articles 184 to 186 of that Directive is an integral part of the VAT deduction scheme established by that act.

(see paras 25, 26, 28, 32, 33, operative part)
Keywords

Summary



Keywords

Approximation of laws — Medicinal products for human use — Directive 2001/83 — Classification of a product as a medicinal product by function — Criteria — Whether the product is such as to have any beneficial effects, either immediately or in the long term, on human health

(European Parliament and Council Directive 2001/83, as amended by Directive 2004/27, Arts 1, point 2, and 4(4))

Summary

Article 1(2)(b) of Directive 2001/83 on the Community code relating to medicinal products for human use, as amended by Directive 2004/27, must be interpreted as not covering substances, such as those at issue in the main proceedings, which produce effects that merely modify physiological functions but which are not such as to have any beneficial effects, either immediately or in the long term, on human health, are consumed solely to induce a state of intoxication and are, as such, harmful to human health.

(see para. 50, operative part)
Keywords

Operative part



Keywords

Community trade mark — Observations of third parties and opposition — Examination of the opposition — Proof of use of the earlier mark — Genuine use — Definition — Criteria for assessment (Council Regulation No 40/94, Art. 43(2)) (see paras 29, 32)

2. Community trade mark — Lodging the application for a Community trade mark — Identification of the goods or services in relation to which the mark is used — Use of the general indications of the class headings of the Nice Classification — Obligation on the applicant to specify the goods or services to which the application relates (Council Regulation No 40/94, Art. 43(2) and (3)) (see paras 40, 41)

3. Community trade mark — Decisions of the Office — Principle of equal treatment — Principle of sound administration — OHIM’s previous decision-making practice — Principle of legality (see para. 45)

4. Appeals — Grounds — Mere repetition of the pleas and arguments put forward before the General Court — Error of law relied on not identified — Inadmissibility (Art. 256(1) TFEU; Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 58, first para.; Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, Art. 112(1), first para., (c)) (see para. 54)

Operative part

Operative part

The Court:

1. Dismisses the appeal;

2. Orders Reber Holding GmbH & Co. KG to pay the costs.
Case C‑491/13

Mohamed Ali Ben Alaya

v

Bundesrepublik Deutschland

(Request for a preliminary ruling from the Verwaltungsgericht Berlin)

‛Reference for a preliminary ruling — Area of freedom, security and justice — Directive 2004/114/EC — Articles 6, 7 and 12 — Conditions of admission of third-country nationals for the purposes of studies — Refusal to admit a person who meets the conditions laid down in Directive 2004/114 — Discretion enjoyed by the competent authorities’

Summary — Judgment of the Court (Third Chamber), 10 September 2014

Border controls, asylum and immigration — Immigration policy — Admission of third-country nationals for the purposes of studies, pupil exchange, unremunerated training or voluntary service — Directive 2004/114 — Conditions — Refusal to admit a person who meets the conditions laid down by the directive — Unlawful — Discretion enjoyed by the competent authorities

(Council Directive 2004/114, Arts 6, 7 and 12)

Article 12 of Directive 2004/114 on the conditions of admission of third-country nationals for the purposes of studies, pupil exchange, unremunerated training or voluntary service must be interpreted as meaning that the Member State concerned is obliged to admit to its territory a third-country national who wishes to stay for more than three months in that territory for study purposes, where that national meets the conditions for admission exhaustively listed in Articles 6 and 7 of that directive and provided that that Member State does not invoke against that person one of the grounds expressly listed by the directive as justification for refusing a residence permit.

In fact, the measure of discretion which Member States are allowed to exercise when considering applications for admission under the directive relates only to the conditions laid down in Articles 6 and 7 of the directive and, within that context, to the assessment of the relevant facts in order to determine whether those conditions are met and, in particular, whether there are grounds relating to the existence of a threat to public policy, public security or public health which preclude the admission of the third-country national.

(see paras 33, 36, operative part)
Case C‑162/13

Damijan Vnuk

v

Zavarovalnica Triglav d.d.

(Request for a preliminary ruling from the Vrhovno sodišče)

‛Reference for a preliminary ruling — Compulsory insurance against civil liability in respect of the use of motor vehicles — Directive 72/166/EEC — Article 3(1) — Concept of ‘use of vehicles’ — Accident caused in the courtyard of a farm by a tractor to which a trailer was attached’

Summary — Judgment of the Court (Third Chamber), 4 September 2014

Judicial proceedings — Oral procedure — Reopening — Obligation to reopen the oral procedure to enable the parties to submit observations on issues of law raised in the Opinion of the Advocate General — None (Art. 252, second para., TFEU; Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, Art. 83) EU law — Interpretation — Principles — Independent and uniform interpretation EU law — Interpretation — Multilingual texts — Differences between the various language versions — Account to be taken of the general scheme and purpose of the rules in question Approximation of laws — Insurance against civil liability in respect of motor vehicles — Directive 72/166 — Concept of ‘use of vehicles’ — Accident caused in the courtyard of a farm by a tractor to which a trailer was attached — Included — Conditions — Assessment which is a matter for the national court (Council Directive 72/166, Art. 3(1))
Articles 138(1) and 139(1), second subparagraph, of Directive 2006/112 on the common system of value added tax, as amended by Directive 2010/88 must be interpreted as precluding the tax authorities of a Member State from refusing to grant an exemption from value added tax in respect of an intra-Community supply of goods on the ground that the purchaser was not registered for value added tax purposes in another Member State and the supplier has proven neither the authenticity of the signature on the documents submitted in support of its declaration in respect of a supply it claims to be exempt from value added tax nor that the person who signed those documents on behalf of the purchaser had the authority to represent the purchaser, where the evidence establishing entitlement to the exemption submitted by the supplier in support of its declaration is consistent with the list of documents to be submitted to those authorities under national law and has been accepted by them, initially, as supporting evidence.

It is contrary to the principle of legal certainty for the competent tax authorities to require, in such circumstances, additional evidence.

Possible irregularities affecting the register of taxpayers cannot deprive a trader who has relied on the information entered in that register of the right of exemption from value added tax to which it is entitled. A competent tax authority which has, initially, agreed and accepted that a purchaser was subject to value added tax in another Member State in accordance with a condition set out in national law, but which, in the course of a subsequent inspection, finds that that condition was not satisfied and therefore refuses entitlement to the exemption from value added tax, infringes the principles of legal certainty and proportionality.

(see paras 33-36, 43, operative part 1)
Case C‑252/13

European Commission

v

Kingdom of the Netherlands

‛Failure of a Member State to fulfil obligations — Directives 2002/73/EC and 2006/54/EC — Equal treatment for men and women — Employment and occupation — Access to employment — Return from maternity leave — Formal requirements for the application initiating proceedings — Coherent summary of the pleas — Unambiguous wording of the form of order sought’

Summary — Judgment of the Court (Sixth Chamber), 22 October 2014

Judicial proceedings — Application initiating proceedings — Formal requirements — Identification of the subject-matter of the dispute — Brief summary of the pleas in law on which the application is based — Unambiguous wording of the form of order sought by the applicant — Requirement not met — Inadmissibility

(Art 258 TFEU; Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, Art. 120(c))

See the text of the decision.

(see paras 28, 29, 33, 34, 42, 43)

Case C‑252/13

European Commission

v

Kingdom of the Netherlands

‛Failure of a Member State to fulfil obligations — Directives 2002/73/EC and 2006/54/EC — Equal treatment for men and women — Employment and occupation — Access to employment — Return from maternity leave — Formal requirements for the application initiating proceedings — Coherent summary of the pleas — Unambiguous wording of the form of order sought’

Summary — Judgment of the Court (Sixth Chamber), 22 October 2014

Judicial proceedings — Application initiating proceedings — Formal requirements — Identification of the subject-matter of the dispute — Brief summary of the pleas in law on which the application is based — Unambiguous wording of the form of order sought by the applicant — Requirement not met — Inadmissibility

(Art 258 TFEU; Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, Art. 120(c))

See the text of the decision.

(see paras 28, 29, 33, 34, 42, 43)
Articles 41(1), 43 and 45 of Directive 2004/18 on the coordination of procedures for the award of public works contracts, public supply contracts and public service contracts must be interpreted as meaning that, where the conditions for the application of the grounds for exclusion set out in Article 45 are not fulfilled, that article does not preclude the adoption by a contracting authority of a decision not to award a contract for which a procurement procedure has been held and not to proceed with the definitive award of the contract to the sole tenderer remaining in contention to whom the contract had been provisionally awarded.

EU law does not preclude Member States from providing in their legislation for the possibility of adopting a decision to withdraw an invitation to tender. The grounds for such a decision may be based on reasons which reflect, inter alia, the assessment as to whether it is expedient, from the point of view of the public interest, to carry an award procedure to its conclusion, having regard, among other things, to any change that may arise in the economic context or factual circumstances, or indeed the needs of the contracting authority concerned. The grounds for such a decision may also relate to there being an insufficient degree of competition, due to the fact that, at the conclusion of the award procedure in question, only one tenderer was qualified to perform the contract. As a consequence, provided the principles of transparency and equal treatment are complied with, a contracting authority cannot be required to carry to its conclusion an award procedure that has been initiated and to award the contract in question, including where there remains only one tenderer in contention.

(see paras 35-37, operative part 1)
The expression ‘place where the harmful event occurred or may occur’ in Article 5(3) of Regulation No 44/2001 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters is intended to cover both the place where the damage occurred and the place of the event giving rise to it, so that the defendant may be sued, at the option of the applicant, in the courts for either of those places. Since identification of one of the linking factors thus establishes the jurisdiction of the court objectively best placed to determine whether the elements establishing the liability of the person sued are present, it follows that only the court in whose jurisdiction the relevant linking factor is situated may validly be seised.

Article 5(3) of Regulation No 44/2001 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters must be interpreted as meaning that, in the event of an allegation of infringement of copyright and rights related to copyright guaranteed by the Member State of the court seised, that court has jurisdiction, on the basis of the place where the damage occurred, to hear an action for damages in respect of an infringement of those rights resulting from the placing of protected photographs online on a website accessible in its territorial jurisdiction. On the basis of the principle of territoriality, that court has jurisdiction only to rule on the damage caused in the Member State within which the court is situated.

The occurrence of damage and/or the likelihood of its occurrence arise from the accessibility in the Member State of the referring court, via the website, of the photographs to which copyright and rights related to copyright pertain. In that respect, it is irrelevant that the website is not directed at the Member State in which the court seised is situated.

(see paras 33, 34, 36, 38, operative part)
The payment of default interest constitutes a measure giving effect to a judgment annulling a measure, for the purposes of the first paragraph of Article 266 TFEU, in that it is designed to compensate at a standard rate for the loss of enjoyment of the monies owed and to encourage the debtor to comply with that judgment as soon as possible. By contrast, the grant of compensatory interest does not fall within the legal framework of the measure adopted to comply with the judgment, for the purposes of the first paragraph of Article 266 TFEU, but comes under the second paragraph of Article 266 TFEU, which refers to Article 340 TFEU, that is to say, to the general law on the non-contractual liability of the European Union. That category of interest is designed to compensate for the time that passes before the judicial assessment of the amount of damage, irrespective of any delay attributable to the debtor.

As only default interest may be awarded in accordance with the first paragraph of Article 266 TFEU, the basis for the Commission’s obligation to pay the principal debt together with interest is not its duty to implement the contested decision but its duty to comply with a judgment of the General Court.

(see paras 30, 31, 37, 38)
Article 2 of the Directive 90/232 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to insurance against civil liability in respect of the use of motor vehicles, as amended by Directive 2005/14, must be interpreted as meaning that a premium which varies according to whether the insured vehicle is to be used only in the territory of the Member State in which that vehicle is normally based or in the entire territory of the European Union does not fall within the concept of ‘single premium’, within the meaning of that article. The provisions of that Article 2 are aimed not exclusively at the relationship between the insurer and victim but also at the one between the insurer and the party insured. In particular, those provisions imply that, in return for payment by the party insured of the single premium, the insurer assumes, in principle, the risk of compensating the victims of any accident involving the insured vehicle, regardless of the EU Member State in whose territory that vehicle is used or the accident takes place. A variable premium, contrary to what that article provides, amounts to subjecting the insurer’s commitment to assume the risk of using that vehicle outside the Member State in which it is normally based to the payment of a premium supplement.

(see paras 29-31, operative part)