Keywords

Summary



Keywords

1 Accession of new Member States to the Communities - Spain - Transitional measures - Agriculture - Suspension of import duties - Regulation No 3416/91 - Scope - Preserved tuna in olive oil from Spain - Excluded

(1985 Act of Accession, Art. 75(4); Commission Regulation No 3416/91, Art. 1(1))

2 Own resources of the European Communities - Post-clearance recovery of import or export duties - `Information given by the competent authorities themselves which is binding on them' - Meaning - Information on tariff classification supplied direct to a given economic agent in a specific case by an act falling within a category exhaustively defined by Council Regulation No 1715/90

(Council Regulations Nos 1697/79, Art. 5(1), and 1715/90)

3 Own resources of the European Communities - Post-clearance recovery of import or export duties - Conditions for the application of Article 5(2) of Regulation No 1697/79 - Appraisal by the national courts - Error by the administration which could not `reasonably have been detected by the person liable' - Criteria for assessment

Summary

4 The suspension of residual customs duties applicable to imports from Spain into the Community of Ten under Article 75(1) of the Act of Accession, provided for in Article 1(1) of Regulation No 3416/91 on certain residual duties applicable in 1991 in the framework of the successive reduction in accordance with the Act of Accession of Spain and Portugal for the agricultural products listed in the Annex to Regulation No 3835/90, amending Regulations Nos 3831/90, 3832/90 and 3833/90 in respect of the system of generalized tariff preferences applied to certain products originating in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, does not apply to imports of preserved tuna in olive oil from Spain.

Provisions granting suspension of customs duties are to be interpreted strictly according to their terms and may not therefore be applied, contrary to their wording, to products which they do not mention.

Whilst it is true, first, that Regulation No 3416/91 sought to ensure that agricultural products imported from Spain and Portugal were treated no less favourably than the same products imported from the four non-member countries mentioned in Regulation No 3835/90 and granted preferential treatment, and, second, that preserved tuna in olive oil ranks among the agricultural products listed in the Annex to the latter regulation, the fact nevertheless remains that the wording of Article 1(1) of Regulation No 3416/91 makes no reference to Article 173 of the Act of Accession, which, forming part of Chapter 4 dealing with fisheries, a chapter quite separate from Chapter 3 which deals with agriculture, provides for the progressive abolition of customs duties on fishery products.

Furthermore, the suspension of customs duties on fishery products requires an act of the Council. Although Article 75(4) of the Act of Accession, on which that regulation is based, empowers the Commission to suspend customs duties on the products mentioned in that article, no provision of the Act of Accession empowers the Commission to suspend duties on fishery products.

5 Only measures relating to the tariff classification of goods addressed by the competent authorities directly to a particular trader in a specific case and falling within the category exhaustively defined by Regulation No 1715/90 constitute `information given by the customs authorities themselves which is binding on them' within the meaning of the second indent of Article 5(1) of Regulation No 1697/79 on the post-clearance recovery of import or export duties.

6 Article 5(2) of Regulation No 1697/79 on the post-clearance recovery of import or export duties makes the right of the person liable to pay customs duties not to have post-clearance recovery effected by the competent authorities subject to three conditions whose fulfilment is a matter to be assessed by the national court, namely: the competent authorities themselves must have made an error, that error must be such that it could not reasonably have been detected by the person liable and the person liable must have acted in good faith and complied with all the provisions laid down by the legislation in force so far as his customs declaration is concerned.

In determining whether or not the error committed by the authorities could reasonably have been detected by the person liable account should be taken, in particular, of the nature of the error, the professional experience of the trader concerned and the degree of care exercised by him. The relevant factors to be taken into account include the complexity of the legislation, the terms in which the objective of the provisions at issue is expressed, recurrence of the error in question in other measures of the Member State concerned and any divergence of views between the Member States as to the proper interpretation of the relevant provisions.