ddrg/super_eurlex huggingface dataset:
Article 3(3) of Regulation No 565/2002 establishing the method for managing tariff quotas and introducing a system of certificates of origin for garlic imported from third countries and Article 4(3) of Regulation No 2988/95 on the protection of the European Communities financial interests must be interpreted not, in principle, precluding a mechanism whereby, following an order placed by an operator, a traditional importer within the meaning of the former regulation, having exhausted its licences to import at a preferential rate of duty, with a second operator, also a traditional importer not holding such licences,

— goods are, first of all, sold, outside the European Union, by an undertaking connected with the second operator, to a third operator, a new importer within the meaning of the former regulation, holding such licences,

— the goods are, then, released for free circulation in the European Union by the third operator at the preferential rate of customs duty, subsequently sold on by the third to the second operator and

— the goods are, finally, sold by the second to the first operator, which thereby acquires goods imported under the tariff quota set out in the former regulation despite the fact that the first operator does not hold the necessary licences for so doing.

In order for such a mechanism for the sale and resale of goods between operators not to result in either an operator unduly influencing the market and, in particular, circumvention by traditional importers of Article 5(3) of Regulation No 562/2002, or an obstacle to the objective of licence applications being linked to a genuine commercial activity, it is nevertheless necessary for each stage of that mechanism to involve a price corresponding to the market price and for imports at a preferential rate of duty to be carried out, by means of lawfully-obtained import licences, by the holder of those licences. It is, inter alia, for the national court to establish whether each of the operators received an appropriate price on importing the goods at issue, on their sale or resale, allowing each of the operators to maintain the market position attributed to it in managing the quota.

Furthermore, as for determining whether such a mechanism could have been established with the essential aim of artificially creating the requisite conditions for the application of the preferential rate of duty, amongst the factors that could allow the artificial nature of such a mechanism to be established are the facts that the importer holding the import licences did not accept any commercial risk or that the importer’s profit margin is insignificant or that the price of the goods sold by the importer to the first buyer in the European Union, then by the latter to the second buyer in the European Union, is lower than the market price.

(see paras 43, 51, 53, operative part)
Case C‑520/14

Gemeente Borsele

v

Staatssecretaris van Financiën

and

Staatssecretaris van Financiën

v

Gemeente Borsele

(Request for a preliminary ruling from the Hoge Raad der Nederlanden)

‛Reference for a preliminary ruling — Value added tax — Directive 2006/112/EC — Articles 2(1)(c) and 9(1) — Taxable persons — Economic activities — Definition — Transport of schoolchildren’

Summary — Judgment of the Court (Fifth Chamber), 12 May 2016

Harmonisation of fiscal legislation — Common system of value added tax — Economic activities within the meaning of Article 9(1) of Directive 2006/112 — Transport of schoolchildren provided by a regional or local authority — Difference between the operating costs and the sums received in return for the schoolchildren transport services indicating that it is more of a fee than a consideration — No direct link between the service provided and the consideration received — Not included

(Council Directive 2006/112, Arts 2(1)(c) and 9(1))

Article 9(1) of Directive 2006/112 on the common system of value added tax must be interpreted as meaning that a regional or local authority, which provides a service for the transport of schoolchildren, does not carry out an economic activity and is not therefore a taxable person where that municipality recovers, through the contributions that it receives, only a small part of the costs incurred. The contributions at issue are not payable by each user and were paid by only a third of the users, with the result that they account for only 3% of the overall transport costs, the balance being financed by public funds. Such a difference between the operating costs and the sums received in return for the services offered suggests that the parental contribution must be regarded more as a fee than as consideration.

It therefore follows from that lack of symmetry that there is no genuine link between the amount paid and the services supplied. Hence, it does not appear that the link between the transport service provided by the municipality in question and the payment to be made by parents is sufficiently direct for that payment to be regarded as consideration for that service and, accordingly, for that service to be regarded as an economic activity within the meaning of Article 9(1) of Directive 2006/112.

(see paras 33, 34, 36, operative part)
Case C‑540/14 P

DK Recycling und Roheisen GmbH

v

European Commission

‛Appeal — Environment — Directive 2003/87/EC — Article 10a — Scheme for greenhouse gas emission allowance trading — Transitional rules for harmonised free allocation of emission allowances from 2013 — Decision 2011/278/EU — National implementation measures submitted by the Federal Republic of Germany — Rejection of the inscription of certain installations on the lists of installations receiving free allocations of emission allowances — Provision relating to cases of ‘undue hardship’ — Implementing powers of the Commission’

Summary — Judgment of the Court (First Chamber), 22 June 2016

Judicial proceedings — Request that the oral procedure be reopened — Request to lodge observations on points of law raised by the Opinion of the Advocate General — Conditions for reopening (Art. 252, second para., TFEU; Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, Art. 83)

Appeal — Interest in bringing proceedings — Condition — Appeal capable of procuring an advantage for the party bringing it — Admissibility of a request for substitution of grounds amounting to a defence to a plea raised by the other party

Acts of the institutions — Basic legislation and implementing legislation — Implementing legislation not being capable of amending or supplementing the essential elements of the basic legislation — Categorisation of essential elements — Characteristics and particular features of the field concerned taken into account (Art. 290 TFEU)

Environment — Atmospheric pollution — Directive 2003/87 — Objective — Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions — Compliance with sub-objectives defined by the directive (European Parliament and Council Directive 2003/87, as amended by Directive 2009/29, Recitals 5 and 7 and Art. 1)

Environment — Atmospheric pollution — Directive 2003/87 — Scheme for greenhouse gas emission allowance trading — Transitional regime for free allocation of allowances — Method of allocation fully harmonised on a sectoral basis — Implementing legislation not capable of conflicting with that method of allocation (European Parliament and Council Directive 2003/87, as amended by Directive 2009/29, Art. 10a(1))
Consequently, child benefit intended, in particular, to meet some of the costs that must be borne by a person responsible for one or more children and granted to any person claiming it, as well as child tax credit paid to any person responsible for one or more children and the amount of which varies according to family income, the number of such children and other factors concerning the individual situation of the family concerned, must be classified as ‘social security benefits’, as referred to in Article 3(1)(j) of Regulation No 883/2004 on the coordination of social security systems, read in conjunction with Article 1(z) thereof.

Benefits which are granted automatically to families that meet certain objective criteria relating in particular to their size, income and capital resources, without any individual and discretionary assessment of personal needs, and which are intended to meet family expenses must be regarded as social security benefits.

A host Member State which, for the purpose of granting social benefits, requires a national of another Member State to be residing in its territory lawfully commits indirect discrimination.

In order to be justified, such indirect discrimination must be appropriate for securing the attainment of a legitimate objective and cannot go beyond what is necessary to attain that objective.

In that regard, the need to protect the finances of the host Member State justifies in principle the possibility of checking whether residence is lawful when a social benefit is granted in particular to persons from other Member States who are not economically active, as such grant could have consequences for the overall level of assistance which may be accorded by that State.

So far as concerns the proportionality of the right to reside test, verification by the national authorities, in connection with the grant of the social benefits at issue, that the claimant is not unlawfully present in their territory must be regarded as a situation involving checks on the lawfulness of the residence of Union citizens, under the second subparagraph of Article 14(2) of Directive 2004/38 on the right of citizens of the Union and their family members to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States, for which reason this verification cannot be carried out systematically.

Consequently, where it is only in the event of doubt that the national authorities effect verification necessary to determine whether the claimant satisfies the conditions laid down by Directive 2004/38, in particular those set out in Article 7, and, therefore, whether he has a right to reside lawfully in the territory of that Member State for the purposes of the directive, the national legislation does not amount to discrimination prohibited under Article 4 of Regulation No 883/2004 on the coordination of social security systems.

(see paras 76, 79-82, 84, 86)
Article 3 of Directive 98/6 on consumer protection in the indication of the prices of products offered to consumers, read in conjunction with Article 1 and Article 2(a) of that directive, must be interpreted as meaning that costs in connection with the transfer of a motor vehicle from the manufacturer to the dealer, which are payable by the consumer, must be included in the selling price of that vehicle indicated in an advertisement made by the trader when, having regard to all the features of that advertisement, in the eyes of the consumer it sets out an offer concerning that vehicle. It is for the national court to determine whether all those conditions are satisfied.

Although Article 3(4) of Directive 98/6 lays down no general obligation to mention the selling price, an advertisement mentioning both the characteristics of the product on offer and a price appearing, to a reasonably well-informed and reasonably observant and circumspect consumer, to be the selling price of that product, in addition to a date until which the offer made to private individuals remains valid, is nevertheless liable to be regarded by such a consumer as the trader’s offer to sell the product under the conditions mentioned in that advertisement. In such a case, the price so indicated must satisfy the requirements of Directive 98/6. In particular, that price must be the selling price of the relevant product, namely, its final price, within the meaning of that directive. As a final price, the selling price must necessarily include the unavoidable and foreseeable components of the price, components that are necessarily payable by the consumer and constitute the pecuniary consideration for the acquisition of the product concerned. In consequence, when the trader selling the product requires the consumer to pay the costs of transferring that product from the manufacturer to that trader-vendor, as a result of which those costs, which are moreover invariable, are necessarily payable by the consumer, such costs form a component of the selling price within the meaning of Article 2(a) Directive 98/6.

(see paras 30, 31, 37, 38, 47, operative part)
The fact that the additional data necessary to identify the user of a website are held not by the online media services provider, but by that user’s internet service provider does not appear to be such as to exclude that dynamic IP addresses registered by the online media services provider constitute personal data within the meaning of Article 2(a) of Directive 95/46.

Article 2(a) of Directive 95/46 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data must be interpreted as meaning that a dynamic internet protocol address (IP address) registered by an online media services provider when a person accesses a website that the provider makes accessible to the public constitutes personal data within the meaning of that provision, in relation to that provider, where the latter has the legal means which enable it to identify the data subject with additional data which the internet service provider has about that person.

Article 7(f) of Directive 95/46 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data must be interpreted as precluding the legislation of a Member State, pursuant to which an online media services provider may collect and use personal data relating to a user of those services, without his consent, only in so far as that collection and use of that data are necessary to facilitate and charge for the specific use of those services by that user, even though the objective aiming to ensure the general operability of those services may justify the use of those data after a consultation period of those websites.

Article 7(f) of that directive precludes Member States from excluding, categorically and in general, the possibility of processing certain categories of personal data without allowing the opposing rights and interests at issue to be balanced against each other in a particular case. Thus, Member States cannot definitively prescribe, for certain categories of personal data, the result of the balancing of the opposing rights and interests, without allowing a different result by virtue of the particular circumstances of an individual case.

(see paras 62, 64, operative part 2)
In paragraph 61 of the judgment of 19 June 2012, Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (C‑307/10, EU:C:2012:361), the Court of Justice took the view that, in order to respect the requirements of clarity and precision imposed by Directive 2008/95/EC to approximate the laws of the Member States relating to trade marks, the applicant for a national trade mark who uses all of the general indications listed in the heading of a particular class of the Nice Agreement in order to identify the goods and services for which the protection of the trade mark is sought must specify whether the application for registration is intended to cover all the goods or services included in the alphabetical list of the particular class concerned or only some of those goods or services. If the application relates to only some of those goods or services, the applicant will be required to specify which of the goods or services in that class are intended to be covered.

However, in the first place, paragraph 61 of that judgment does not concern the proprietors of trade marks which have already been registered, but solely applicants for trade marks.

In the second place, in paragraph 61 of that judgment of 19 June 2012, Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, the Court of Justice limited itself to specifying the requirements to which new applicants for national trade marks remain subject, who use the general indications of a class in order to identify the goods and services for which protection as a trade mark is sought. Such requirements help to prevent the situation in which it is not possible to determine with certainty the scope of the protection afforded by a trade mark when a trade mark applicant uses all the indications included in the heading of a class.

It cannot, therefore, be held that the Court of Justice, by the judgment of 19 June 2012, Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, sought to question the validity of the approach set out in Communication No 4/03 of the President of the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) of 16 June 2003 concerning the use of class headings in lists of goods and services for Community trade mark applications and registrations, according to which the use of all the general indications listed in the class heading of a particular class constitutes a claim to all the goods or services falling within that particular class. Consequently, the rule set out in paragraph 61 of that judgment is not applicable to the registration of a trade mark which took place before the delivery of that judgment.

(see paras 28-31)
42

In those circumstances, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales (Civil Division) decided to stay the proceedings and to refer the following questions to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling: ‘(1) (a) In Article 1(1)(a)(ii) of [Directive 98/59], does the phrase “at least 20” refer to the number of dismissals across all of the employer’s establishments in which dismissals are effected within a 90 day period, or does it refer to the number of dismissals in each individual establishment? (b) If Article 1(1)(a)(ii) [of that directive] refers to the number of dismissals in each individual establishment, what is the meaning of “establishment”? In particular, should “establishment” be construed to mean the whole of the relevant retail business, being a single economic business unit, or such part of that business as is contemplating making redundancies, rather than a unit to which a worker is assigned their duties, such as each individual store? (2) In circumstances where an employee claims a protective award against a private employer, can the Member State [concerned] rely on or plead the fact that [Directive 98/59] does not give rise to directly effective rights against the employer in circumstances where: (a) the private employer would, but for the failure by the Member State properly to implement the directive, have been liable to pay a protective award to the employee, because of the failure of that employer to consult in accordance with the directive; and (b) that employer being insolvent, in the event that a protective award is made against the private employer and is not satisfied by that employer, and an application is made to the Member State, that Member State would itself be liable to pay any such protective award to the employee under domestic legislation that implements [Directive 2008/94], subject to any limitation of liability imposed on the Member State’s guarantee institution pursuant to Article 4 of that directive?’
8

Recitals 2, 3, 6 and 7 in the preamble to Directive 2007/44 state: ‘(2) The legal framework has so far provided neither detailed criteria for a prudential assessment of a proposed acquisition nor a procedure for their application. A clarification of the criteria and the process of prudential assessment is needed to provide the necessary legal certainty, clarity and predictability with regard to the assessment process, as well as to the result thereof. (3) The role of the competent authorities in both domestic and cross-border cases should be to carry out the prudential assessment within a framework of a clear and transparent procedure and a limited set of clear assessment criteria of strictly prudential nature. It is therefore necessary to specify criteria for the supervisory assessment of shareholders and management in relation to a proposed acquisition and a clear procedure for their application. … This Directive should not prevent the competent authorities from taking into account commitments made by the proposed acquirer to meet prudential requirements under the assessment criteria laid down in this Directive, are not affected. … (6) … Maximum harmonisation throughout the Community of the procedure and the prudential assessments, without the Member States laying down stricter rules, is … critical. The thresholds for notifying a proposed acquisition or a disposal of a qualifying holding, the assessment procedure, the list of assessment criteria and other provisions of this Directive to be applied to the prudential assessment of proposed acquisitions should therefore be subject to maximum harmonisation. … (7) In order to ensure the clarity and predictability of the assessment procedure there should be a limited maximum period of time for completing the prudential assessment. During the assessment procedure, the competent authorities should be able to interrupt that period only once and only for the purpose of requesting additional information after which the authorities should in any event complete the assessment within the maximum assessment period. … Neither should this prevent the competent authorities from opposing the proposed acquisition, where appropriate, at any time during the maximum assessment period. Cooperation between the proposed acquirer and the competent authorities should thus remain intrinsic to the entire assessment period. Regular contact between the proposed acquirer and the competent authority of the regulated entity in which the acquisition is proposed may also commence in anticipation of a formal notification. Such cooperation should imply a genuine effort to assist each other in order, for example, to avoid unanticipated requests for information or the submission of information late in the assessment period.’
43

Given that neither Directive 2003/86 nor the criterion of proportionality as defined in the Green Paper states what leeway is available to the Member States in imposing integration measures within the meaning Article 7(2) of that directive, and having regard to the fact that the Court has never ruled on the concept of ‘integration measures’ within the meaning of that provision, and thus the scope of that notion has not been clarified, the Raad van State (Council of State) has decided to stay the proceedings and to refer the following questions to the Court for a preliminary ruling: ‘(1) (a) Can the term “integration measures” contained in Article 7(2) of Directive No 2003/86 be interpreted as meaning that the competent authorities of the Member States may require a member of a sponsor’s family to demonstrate that he or she has knowledge of the official language of the Member State concerned at a level corresponding to level A1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, as well as a basic knowledge of the society of that Member State, before those authorities authorise that family member’s entry and residence? (b) Is it relevant to the answer to that question that, also in the context of the proportionality test as described in the Green Paper, the national legislation containing the requirement referred to in Question 1(a) provides that, leaving aside the case in which the family member has shown that, due to a mental or physical disability, he or she is permanently unable to take the civic integration examination, it is only in the case where there is a combination of very special individual circumstances which justifies the assumption that the family member will be permanently unable to comply with the integration measures that the request for authorisation of entry and residence cannot be rejected? (2) Does the purpose of Directive 2003/86, and in particular Article 7(2) thereof, given the proportionality test as described in the abovementioned Green Paper, preclude costs of EUR 350 per attempt for the examination which assesses whether the family member complies with the aforementioned integration measures, and costs of EUR 110 as a single payment for the pack to prepare for the examination?’