ddrg/super_eurlex huggingface dataset:
5

Section 4 of Chapter II of Regulation No 1215/2012, which is entitled ‘Jurisdiction over consumer contracts’, contains Article 17 which provides: ‘(1) In matters relating to a contract concluded by a person, the consumer, for a purpose which can be regarded as being outside his trade or profession, jurisdiction shall be determined by this Section, without prejudice to Article 6 and point 5 of Article 7, if: (a) it is a contract for the sale of goods on instalment credit terms; (b) it is a contract for a loan repayable by instalments, or for any other form of credit, made to finance the sale of goods; or (c) in all other cases, the contract has been concluded with a person who pursues commercial or professional activities in the Member State of the consumer’s domicile or, by any means, directs such activities to that Member State or to several States including that Member State, and the contract falls within the scope of such activities. (2) Where a consumer enters into a contract with a party who is not domiciled in a Member State but has a branch, agency or other establishment in one of the Member States, that party shall, in disputes arising out of the operations of the branch, agency or establishment, be deemed to be domiciled in that Member State. (3) This Section shall not apply to a contract of transport other than a contract which, for an inclusive price, provides for a combination of travel and accommodation.’
23

In the cases which gave rise to the order of 27 November 2008, Renta (C‑151/08, not published, EU:C:2008:662), and the judgment of 20 March 2014, Caixa d’Estalvis i Pensions de Barcelona (C‑139/12, EU:C:2014:174), the Court ruled on the compatibility with Article 33(1) of the Sixth Directive of a national rule of law relating to a tax on transfers of assets for valuable consideration with similar characteristics to those of the duty at issue in the main proceedings. The Court, having recalled the essential characteristics of VAT established in its case-law, of which there are four, namely that VAT applies generally to transactions relating to goods or services, it is proportional to the price charged by the taxable person in return for the goods and services which he has supplied, it is charged at each stage of the production and distribution process, including that of retail sale, irrespective of the number of transactions which have previously taken place, and the amounts paid during the preceding stages of the production and distribution process are deducted from the VAT payable by a taxable person, with the result that that tax applies, at any given stage, only to the value added at that stage and the final burden of that tax rests ultimately with the consumer, considered that such a tax differs from VAT in such a way that it cannot be characterised as a turnover tax within the meaning of Article 33(1) of the Sixth Directive (order of 27 November 2008, Renta, C‑151/08, not published, EU:C:2008:662, paragraphs 32 and 45, and judgment of 20 March 2014, Caixa d’Estalvis i Pensions de Barcelona, C‑139/12, EU:C:2014:174, paragraph 29).
32

In the light of the clarifications provided by the present judgment, and having regard to the case-law holding that provisions which are identical in their content in the directive to approximate the laws of the Member States relating to trade marks and in the regulation on the European Union trade mark must be interpreted in the same way (see, in particular, judgments of 12 January 2006, Deutsche SiSi-Werke, C‑173/04 P, EU:C:2006:20, paragraph 29, of 6 July 2017, Moreno Marín, C‑139/16, EU:C:2017:518, paragraph 27, and of 25 July 2018, Mitsubishi Shoji Kaisha and Mitsubishi Caterpillar Forklift Europe, C‑129/17, EU:C:2018:594, paragraph 29), the approach taken in paragraph 55 of the order of the Court of 26 April 2012, Deichmann v OHIM (C‑307/11 P, not published, EU:C:2012:254), cited by the referring court, which relates to Article 7(1)(b) of Regulation No 40/94, the content of which matches that of Article 3(1)(b) of Directive 2008/95, remains relevant only in those cases where it appears that solely one type of use is practically significant in the economic sector concerned.
27

In those circumstances, the Judecătoria Constanţa (Court of First Instance, Constanţa) decided to stay the proceedings and to refer the following questions to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling: ‘(1) In the context of an action before the courts of a Member State which comprises three heads of claim concerning (i) the dissolution of the marriage of the parents of a minor child, (ii) parental responsibility for that minor child and (iii) maintenance obligations with regard to that minor child, may Article 3(a) and (d) and Article 5 of Regulation No 4/2009 be interpreted as meaning that the court seised of the divorce petition, being also a court for the place where the defendant is habitually resident and the court before which the defendant has entered an appearance, has jurisdiction to give a decision on the claim concerning maintenance obligations in respect of the minor child, notwithstanding its finding that it has no jurisdiction in the matter of parental responsibility for the minor child, or may the claim concerning maintenance obligations be decided only by a court having jurisdiction to adjudicate the claim concerning parental responsibility for the minor child? (2) In the circumstances relating to the jurisdiction of the national court described above, is the claim concerning maintenance obligations with regard to the minor child ancillary to the claim concerning parental responsibility, within the meaning of Article 3(d) of Regulation No 4/2009? (3) In the event that the second question is answered in the negative, is it in the best interests of the child for a court of a Member State which has jurisdiction pursuant to Article 3(a) of Regulation No 4/2009 to decide the claim concerning the maintenance obligations of the parents toward the minor child of the marriage of which the dissolution is sought, notwithstanding the fact that that court has found itself to have no jurisdiction in the matter of parental responsibility and has held, with the force of res judicata, that the conditions laid down by Article 12 of [Regulation No 2201/2003] are not fulfilled?’
65

Having regard to the foregoing, it must be observed that economic operators such as DIREKTexpress Holding and JUREX, which, as it appears from the information before the Court but which is for the referring court to determine, each hold a licence permitting them to supply services consisting in the service of items of correspondence and which were therefore required to ensure at all points in the territory of Germany the formal service of documents in accordance with the specific conditions set out in paragraph 57 of the present judgment, provide part of the ‘universal postal service’ as provided for in Article 3 of Directive 97/67. As is apparent from paragraph 50 of the present judgment and from the fact that these services form part of that universal postal service, such economic operators must be regarded as ‘public postal services’ within the meaning of Article 132(1)(a) of Directive 2006/112 when they provide those services, so that they must be exempt from VAT under the latter provision.
8

The implementing rules for that law, as approved by Government Decision No 44/2004, provided, in respect of Article 175 of that law, as follows: ‘5.1. Energy products other than those referred to in Article 175(3) of Law No 571/2003 on the Tax Code, as subsequently amended and supplemented, shall be subject to excise duty when: (a) the products are manufactured for use as heating fuel or motor fuel; (b) the products are offered for sale as heating fuel or as motor fuel; (c) the products are used as heating fuel or as motor fuel. 2. Any economic operator in one of the situations referred to in paragraph 1 shall be required, before the production, offering for sale or use of energy products, to submit a request to the Ministry of Public Finances — Office for the issue of tax warehouse authorisation for classification of those products for the purposes of excise duty. That request must be accompanied by the test report for the relevant product, issued by a recognised laboratory, by the tariff classification of the product by the National Customs Authority and by the opinion from the Ministry of the Economy and Trade on the equivalence of that product to an equivalent product for which excise duties have been determined. … 4. As regards products covered by any of the situations referred to in Article 175(4), (5) and (6) of Law No 571 of 2003 on the Tax Code, as subsequently amended and supplemented, for which the economic operator has failed to fulfil the obligations referred to in paragraphs 2 and 3, the excise duty payable in the case of motor fuel and additives shall correspond to the tax payable for leaded petrol and, in the case of heating fuel, the excise duty payable is that determined for gas oil.’
12

Article 12a(2) of the Law of 15 December 1980 states: ‘If the foreign national referred to in paragraph 1 submits his application to the Belgian diplomatic or consular representative who has jurisdiction for his place of domicile or his place of residence abroad, documents must be submitted together with the application that show that he meets the conditions set out in Article 10(1) to (3), in particular a medical certificate showing that he is not suffering from one of the diseases listed in the Annex to the present Law, and, if he is older than 18 years, an extract from the criminal records or an equivalent document. The date of submission of the application is that on which all evidence is submitted, in accordance with Article 30 of the wet van 16 juli 2004 houdende het Wetboek van internationaal privaatrecht (Law of 16 July 2004 laying down the Code of Private International Law) or international agreements on the same subject matter. The decision regarding the residence permit shall be taken and notified as soon as possible and no later than six months following the date of submission of the application, as stipulated in the second paragraph. The decision shall be taken with due consideration of all the elements of the file. If the condition relating to the adequacy of the means of subsistence referred to in Article 10(5), is not met, the Minister or his authorised representative should determine, on the basis of the personal needs of the foreign national who is seeking admission and of his family members, what means of subsistence they require to meet their needs without being a burden on the public authorities. The minister or his authorised representative may require the foreign national to submit any documents and information which may be useful for determining that amount. In exceptional cases related to the complexity of the examination of the application as well as in the context of an investigation concerning a marriage referred to in Article 146a of the Civil Code or the conditions of the partnership referred to in Article 10(1)(1), point 5, the Minister or his delegate may, on two occasions, extend this period by a period of three months, by a reasoned decision, notified to the applicant. If no decision has been taken after the expiry of the six-month period following the date on which the application was submitted, which may have been extended in accordance with paragraph 5, the residence permit must be issued.’
17

Article 45 of the Wet betreffende de opvang van asielzoekers en van bepaalde andere categorieën van vreemdelingen (Law of 12 January 2007 on the reception of asylum seekers and certain other categories of foreign nationals) (Moniteur belge of 7 May 2007, p. 24027), in the version applicable to the events in the main proceedings (‘the Law on reception’), provided: ‘A sanction may be imposed on the beneficiary of the reception in the event of a serious breach of the operating regulations and rules applicable to the reception facilities referred to in Article 19. When choosing the sanction, it is necessary to take into account the nature and the importance of the breach and also the actual circumstances in which it was committed. Only the following sanctions may be imposed: … (7) temporary exclusion from material support in a reception facility for a maximum period of 1 month. The sanctions shall be imposed by the director or responsible officer of the reception facility. The sanction referred to in subparagraph 2(7) must be confirmed by the director-general of [Fedasil] within three working days of the adoption of the sanction by the director or the manager of the reception facility. Where it is not confirmed within that period, the sanction of temporary exclusion shall automatically be lifted. Sanctions may, while they are being implemented, be reduced or lifted by the authority which imposed them. The decision imposing a sanction shall be adopted objectively and impartially and shall state the reasons on which it is based. With the exception of the sanction referred to in subparagraph 2(7), in no case shall the enforcement of a sanction have the effect of completely cancelling the material support granted under this law, or of reducing access to medical support. The sanction referred to in subparagraph 2(7) shall have the effect that the person on whom it is imposed is unable to benefit from any other form of reception apart from access to medical support, as referred to in Articles 24 and 25 of the [Law on reception]. The sanction referred to in subparagraph 2(7) may be imposed only in the event of a very serious breach of the internal regulations of the reception facility endangering the staff or other residents of the reception facility or giving rise to serious risks for security or respect for public order in the reception facility. The person on whom the sanction of temporary exclusion is imposed must be heard before the sanction is adopted. …’
16

It must be borne in mind that the purpose of the pre-litigation procedure laid down by the first paragraph of Article 258 TFEU is to give the Member State concerned an opportunity to comply with its obligations under EU law or to avail itself of its right to defend itself against the complaints made by the Commission. The proper conduct of that procedure thus constitutes an essential guarantee required by the TFEU in order to protect the rights of the Member State concerned. It is only when that guarantee is observed that the contentious procedure before the Court can enable it to determine whether the Member State has in fact failed to fulfil the obligations which the Commission alleges it has breached. More specifically, the purpose of the letter of formal notice in the pre-litigation procedure is to delimit the subject matter of the dispute and to indicate to the Member State, which is invited to submit its observations, the factors enabling it to prepare its defence (see, to that effect, judgment of 5 June 2003, Commission v Italy, C‑145/01, EU:C:2003:324, paragraph 17 and the case-law cited).
25

In those circumstances, the Tribunale amministrativo regionale per il Lazio (Regional Administrative Court for Lazio, Italy) decided to stay the proceedings and to refer the following question to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling: ‘Do Article 5(1), in particular subparagraphs (a) and (f), of Delegated Regulation 2015/63, interpreted in the light of the principles referred to in that regulation, in Directive 2014/59, Regulation No 806/2014 and Article 120 TFEU, the fundamental rules of equal treatment, non-discrimination and proportionality laid down in Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and the prohibition on levying double contributions, preclude, for the purpose of calculating the contributions that are the subject of Article 103(2) of Directive 2014/59, the rules laid down for intragroup liabilities from also applying in the case of a ‘de facto’ group or, in any event, in the case of interconnectedness between an institution and other banks forming part of the same system? Alternatively, in the light of the abovementioned principles, may the preferential treatment reserved for liabilities [arising in respect of promotional loans] in Article 5 of Delegated Regulation 2015/63 also be applied, by analogy, to the liabilities of a ‘second-tier’ bank vis-à-vis other banks in the (cooperative credit) system, or should that characteristic of an institution, in fact operating as a lead bank within an interconnected and integrated group of small banks, including in its relations with the European Central Bank and the financial markets, give rise, under existing rules, to some form of adjustment to the financial data submitted by the national resolution authority to the relevant Community bodies and to the determination of the contributions payable by the institution to the resolution fund in respect of its actual liabilities and risk profile?’
6

Article 4(1) to (3) of that directive provides: ‘1. The Member States shall authorise the entry and residence, pursuant to this Directive and subject to compliance with the conditions laid down in Chapter IV, as well as in Article 16, of the following family members: (a) the sponsor’s spouse; (b) the minor children of the sponsor and of his/her spouse, including children adopted …; (c) the minor children including adopted children of the sponsor where the sponsor has custody and the children are dependent on him or her … (d) the minor children including adopted children of the spouse where the spouse has custody and the children are dependent on him or her. … 2. The Member States may, by law or regulation, authorise the entry and residence, pursuant to this Directive and subject to compliance with the conditions laid down in Chapter IV, of the following family members: (a) first-degree relatives in the direct ascending line of the sponsor or his or her spouse, where they are dependent on them and do not enjoy proper family support in the country of origin; (b) the adult unmarried children of the sponsor or his or her spouse, where they are objectively unable to provide for their own needs on account of their state of health. 3. The Member States may, by law or regulation, authorise the entry and residence, pursuant to this Directive and subject to compliance with the conditions laid down in Chapter IV, of the unmarried partner, being a third country national, with whom the sponsor is in a duly attested stable long-term relationship, or of a third country national who is bound to the sponsor by a registered partnership in accordance with Article 5(2), and of the unmarried minor children, including adopted children, as well as the adult unmarried children who are objectively unable to provide for their own needs on account of their state of health, of such persons. Member States may decide that registered partners are to be treated equally as spouses with respect to family reunification.’
27

In those circumstances, the tribunal de première instance francophone de Bruxelles (Court of First Instance (French-speaking), Brussels, Belgium) decided to stay the proceedings and to refer the following question to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling: ‘Must Article 4 of Directive 90/435, combined with other sources of [EU] law, be interpreted as precluding that regulations of a national authority, such as the [ITC 1992] and the [RD/ITC 1992], in the versions applicable in respect of the tax year 2011, which opted for a system of exemption (refraining from taxing the distributed profits received by a parent company by virtue of its association with its subsidiary) under which, first, the dividend distributed by the subsidiary is included in the tax base of the parent company and, secondly, 95% of that dividend is deducted from that tax base as [DTI], by reason of the combined application, for the purpose of determining the basis for assessing the corporation tax of the parent company, of that Belgian system of deducting [DTI] and of (1) rules relating to another deduction constituting a tax advantage provided for by those regulations ([DRC]), (2) entitlement to deduct the outstanding amount of previous recoverable losses, (3) entitlement to carry forward to following tax years, where the relevant amount in respect of a tax year is higher than that of the taxable profits, imputation of the surplus [DTI], of the [DRC] and of the outstanding amount of the previous recoverable losses, and (4) the order in which deductions are to be applied, whereby, during those following tax years, deductions must be applied in the following order, until the taxable profits are used up: first, the [DTI], then the [DRC] carried forward (which may only be carried forward for the “following seven tax periods”), and then the outstanding amount of previous recoverable losses, lead to the reduction, in respect of part or all of the dividends received from the subsidiary, of the losses that the parent company would have been able to deduct if the dividends had been simply excluded from the profits for the tax year during which they were received (with the effect of reducing the taxable profits for that tax year and increasing, where relevant, the tax losses that may be carried forward) rather than being retained within those profits and subsequently being subject to rules governing exemption and carrying forward the amounts which are exempted where there are insufficient profits, that is to say, reduction of the outstanding amount of the parent company’s previous recoverable losses that may occur during tax years following a tax year in respect of which the [DTI], the [DRC] and the outstanding amount of the previous recoverable losses exceed the amount of the taxable profits?’
76

In the version of that regulation that was finally adopted by the Council, namely Council Regulation (Euratom, ECSC, EEC) No 3019/87 of 5 October 1987 laying down special and exceptional provisions applicable to officials of the European Communities serving in a third country (OJ 1987 L 286, p. 3), which added Annex X, in the version resulting from that regulation, to the Staff Regulations, the Parliament’s proposal, which now appears in the third subparagraph of Article 1 of that annex, was retained in the wording that was proposed by the Parliament. In addition, all references to the adoption of general implementing provisions for Article 10 of that annex were deleted, although Article 10 of Annex X to the Staff Regulations, in the version resulting from the amended proposal for a regulation referred to in paragraph 75 above, was rewritten and clarified in order to contain the list of parameters taken into account for fixing the ALC and the weighting applied to those parameters, their value and the scale according to which the allowance was fixed, as a percentage of the reference amount, ranging from 10% where the total value of the various parameters was zero, to 35% where that value was greater than eight. It was also provided, as in the version of that provision currently in force, that the ALC fixed for each place of employment was to be reviewed and, where appropriate, adjusted each year by the appointing authority after the opinion of the Staff Committee had been obtained.