ddrg/super_eurlex huggingface dataset:
5

Article 7 of the directive provides: ‘1. Driving licences shall be issued only to those applicants: (a) who have passed a test of skills and behaviour and a theoretical test and who meet medical standards, in accordance with the provisions of Annexes II and III; … (e) who have their normal residence in the territory of the Member State issuing the licence, or can produce evidence that they have been studying there for at least six months. 2. (a) As from 19 January 2013, licences issued by Member States for categories AM, A1, A2, A, B, B1 and BE shall have an administrative validity of 10 years. A Member State may choose to issue such licences with an administrative validity of up to 15 years; … 3. The renewal of driving licences when their administrative validity expires shall be subject to: (a) continuing compliance with the minimum standards of physical and mental fitness for driving set out in Annex III for driving licences in categories C, CE, C1, C1E, D, DE, D1, D1E; and (b) normal residence in the territory of the Member State issuing the licence, or evidence that applicants have been studying there for at least six months. Member States may, when renewing driving licences in categories AM, A, A1, A2, B, B1 and BE, require an examination applying the minimum standards of physical and mental fitness for driving set out in Annex III. … 5. … Without prejudice to Article 2, a Member State issuing a licence shall apply due diligence to ensure that a person fulfils the requirements set out in paragraph 1 of this Article and shall apply its national provisions on the cancellation or withdrawal of the right to drive if it is established that a licence has been issued without the requirements having been met.’
18

Article 13 of that legislative decree states: ‘1. The suspect and his or her lawyer may lodge an objection against the recognition order before the judge responsible for preliminary investigations within five days of the notification referred to in Article 4(4). 2. The judge responsible for preliminary investigations shall decide by order after hearing the public prosecutor. The order shall be notified to the public prosecutor and served on the person concerned. 3. The public prosecutor shall inform the issuing authority of the decision without delay. If the objection is upheld, the recognition order shall be annulled. 4. The objection shall not have any suspensive effect on the execution of the investigation order or on the transmission of the results of activities carried out. The public prosecutor may, in any event, refuse to transmit the results of activities carried out if serious and irreparable harm could be caused to the suspect, the accused person or any person otherwise affected by the execution of the measure. 5. If the grounds for refusal set out in Article 10 are met, the judge responsible for preliminary investigations, when requested to execute the investigation order under Article 5, shall, also at the request of the parties, order the annulment of the recognition order issued by the public prosecutor. 6. The investigation order shall not be executed if the recognition order has been annulled. 7. The suspect or the accused person, his or her lawyer, the person whose evidence or property has been frozen, and the person entitled to its restitution may also lodge an objection to a decision recognising the investigation order in respect of the freezing of evidence. The judge shall decide in chambers in accordance with Article 127 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. In such cases, the judge’s decision may be appealed on a point of law by the public prosecutor’s office and the persons concerned for infringement of the law within 10 days of its notification or service. The Court of Cassation shall decide in chambers within 30 days of the date of the appeal. The appeal shall not have any suspensory effect.’
4

Article 3 of that regulation provides: ‘1. A contract shall be governed by the law chosen by the parties. The choice shall be made expressly or clearly demonstrated by the terms of the contract or the circumstances of the case. By their choice the parties can select the law applicable to the whole or to part only of the contract. 2. The parties may at any time agree to subject the contract to a law other than that which previously governed it, whether as a result of an earlier choice made under this Article or of other provisions of this Regulation. Any change in the law to be applied that is made after the conclusion of the contract shall not prejudice its formal validity under Article 11 or adversely affect the rights of third parties. 3. Where all other elements relevant to the situation at the time of the choice are located in a country other than the country whose law has been chosen, the choice of the parties shall not prejudice the application of provisions of the law of that other country which cannot be derogated from by agreement. 4. Where all other elements relevant to the situation at the time of the choice are located in one or more Member States, the parties’ choice of applicable law other than that of a Member State shall not prejudice the application of provisions of [EU] law, where appropriate as implemented in the Member State of the forum, which cannot be derogated from by agreement. 5. The existence and validity of the consent of the parties as to the choice of the applicable law shall be determined in accordance with the provisions of Articles 10, 11 and 13.’
9

Under Article 7 of the Eighth VAT Directive: ‘1. The application for refund provided for in Articles 3 and 4 shall relate to invoiced purchases of goods or services or to imports made during a period of not less than three months or not more than one calendar year. Applications may, however, relate to a period of less than three months where the period represents the remainder of a calendar year. Such applications may also relate to invoices or import documents not covered by previous applications and concerning transactions completed during the calendar year in question. Applications shall be submitted to the competent authority referred to in the first paragraph of Article 9 within six months of the end of the calendar year in which the tax became chargeable. … 3. The competent authority referred to in the first paragraph of Article 9 shall stamp each invoice and/or import document to prevent their use for further application and shall return them within one month. 4. Decisions concerning applications for refund shall be announced within six months of the date when the applications, accompanied by all the necessary documents required under this Directive for examination of the application, are submitted to the competent authority referred to in paragraph 3. Refunds shall be made before the end of the abovementioned period, at the applicant’s request, in either the Member State of refund or the State in which he is established. In the latter case, the bank charges for the transfer shall be payable by the applicant. The grounds for refusal of an application shall be stated. Appeals against such refusals may be made to the competent authorities in the Member State concerned, subject to the same conditions as to form and time limits as those governing claims for refunds made by taxable persons established in the same State. …’
27

In the second place, the referring court is uncertain as to the consequences of a failure to comply with that period. According to that court, arguably it cannot be established that an asset has been allocated to business assets in the absence of evidence, identifiable by the tax authorities, that the taxable person has chosen to make such an allocation. There is thus a presumption that any asset that has not been expressly allocated by a taxable person to the assets of his or her business must form part of his or her private assets. However, the referring court also states that it is apparent from the judgment of 25 July 2018, Gmina Ryjewo (C‑140/17, EU:C:2018:595) that the absence of a declaration of allocation does not preclude such an intention of allocation from being implied and that the question whether the person concerned acted as a taxable person must be assessed in the light of a broad interpretation of that concept. On the basis of those considerations, it could be argued that there is a presumption of ‘acquisition as a taxable person’ when a trader acquires an asset which, by its nature, may as a rule also be used for the purposes of his or her business, and which has not been allocated by that trader exclusively to his or her business.
56

In the third place, as regards the question whether a taxable person acting in bad faith can be refused the right of deduction only where there is a risk of loss of tax revenue for the Member State and a tax advantage for the taxable person or other parties involved in the transaction concerned, it must be observed that, under the reverse charge procedure, no payment is due, in principle, to the Treasury (see, in particular, judgments of 6 February 2014, Fatorie, C‑424/12, EU:C:2014:50, paragraph 29, and of 26 April 2017, Farkas, C‑564/15, EU:C:2017:302, paragraph 41). Moreover, the question whether the VAT payable on the prior or subsequent sales of the goods concerned has or has not been paid to the Treasury is irrelevant to the right of the taxable person to deduct VAT (see, to that effect, order of 3 September 2020, Vikingo Fővállalkozó, C‑610/19, EU:C:2020:673, paragraph 42 and the case-law cited). However, as is apparent from paragraphs 44 and 46 to 52 of the present judgment, the taxable person must be refused the right of deduction where the information necessary to verify that the supplier of the goods or services concerned had the status of taxable person is lacking or it is established to the requisite legal standard that that taxable person has committed VAT fraud or knew or ought to have known that the transaction relied on as a basis for that right was connected with such a fraud. A finding of a risk of loss of tax revenue is not, therefore, necessary in order to justify such a refusal.
3

Recitals 6, 7, 16, 17, 21 and 25 of Regulation No 6/2002 state: ‘(6) Since the objectives of the proposed action, namely, the protection of one design right for one area encompassing all the Member States, cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States by reason of the scale and the effects of the creation of a Community design and a Community design authority, and can therefore be better achieved at Community level, the [Union] may adopt measures, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity as set out in Article 5 of the Treaty. … (7) Enhanced protection for industrial design not only promotes the contribution of individual designers to the sum of Community excellence in the field, but also encourages innovation and development of new products and investment in their production. … (16) Some [sectors of industry in the European Union] produce large numbers of designs for products frequently having a short market life where protection without the burden of registration formalities is an advantage and the duration of protection is of lesser significance. On the other hand, there are sectors of industry which value the advantages of registration for the greater legal certainty it provides and which require the possibility of a longer term of protection corresponding to the foreseeable market life of their products. (17) This calls for two forms of protection, one being a short-term unregistered design and the other being a longer-term registered design. … (21) The exclusive nature of the right conferred by the registered Community design is consistent with its greater legal certainty. It is appropriate that the unregistered Community design should, however, constitute a right only to prevent copying. Protection could not therefore extend to design products which are the result of a design arrived at independently by a second designer. This right should also extend to trade in products embodying infringing designs. … (25) Those sectors of industry producing large numbers of possibly short-lived designs over short periods of time of which only some may be eventually commercialised will find advantage in the unregistered Community design. …’
30

Next, the referring court is uncertain whether Directive 2012/19 was correctly transposed into Czech law given that, first, the Commission itself found, at the time of adoption of Directive 2003/108 amending Directive 2002/96, that the obligation to finance the costs relating to the management of waste from products placed on the market before the period for transposition of the latter directive expired created a retroactive liability likely to expose producers to serious economic risks, as such a finding may be applied in a similar manner to the photovoltaic panels newly included within the scope of EU legislation by Directive 2012/19. Second, the legitimate expectations of producers of photovoltaic panels who could not suppose that such a financing obligation would be imposed on them in respect of waste from panels already placed on the market in the past and who accordingly would not have factored the costs of such financing in the price of their products would be undermined. Third, a difference in treatment would be created between users who were already fulfilling the financing obligation laid down by national law before the expiry of the period for transposition of Directive 2012/19 and those who were not. The referring court observes, fourth, that the Federal Republic of Germany, the Hellenic Republic and the Republic of Austria likewise did not transpose the directive by maintaining the obligation on producers to finance the costs relating to the management of waste from products placed on the market after 13 August 2005.
64

In the present case, it follows from the answer to the first question that, subject to the checks to be carried out by the referring court, EU law does not preclude national legislation which provides that the minimum activity on agricultural areas naturally kept in a state suitable for grazing or cultivation, referred to in Article 4(1)(c)(iii) and Article 4(2)(b) of Regulation No 1307/2013, must be carried out by the farmer with animals kept by the farmer. In that regard, as is apparent from paragraph 38 of this judgment, in the present case, ‘animal keeper’, as defined in Article 2(m) of Order No 619/2015, means not only a person who permanently possesses animals, as the owner of animals and/or owner of a holding, but also a person who temporarily possesses those animals, as a person into whose custody they have been entrusted for the entire period of the year of application, which are kept pursuant to an act concluded under the conditions laid down by the legislation in force. Such a definition does not appear, as a matter of principle, to exclude from the concept of ‘animal keeper’ a person who possesses animals which are loaned to him free of charge by natural persons who own them, and who has sufficient power over those animals for the purposes of carrying out his agricultural activity. Since such a finding involves an interpretation of national law, it is for the referring court, where appropriate, to make it.
41

In those circumstances, the Supremo Tribunal Administrativo (Supreme Administrative Court, Portugal) decided to stay the proceedings and to refer the following questions, worded identically in each of the two present cases, to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling: ‘(1) Does Article 3(1) of Regulation No 2988/95 preclude national legislation which imposes on the beneficiary of a subsidy the burden of bringing before the competent court an administrative action against a measure ordering the repayment of amounts received wrongly by reason of the occurrence of an irregularity, failing which that measure will become final if it not appealed in time (that is to say, if the beneficiary does not avail himself or herself in time of the means of defence available to him or her under national law) and, in consequence, the amount wrongly received will be recoverable in accordance with the rules and time limits laid down by national law? (2) Does Article 3(1) of Regulation No 2988/95 preclude national legislation according to which the beneficiary of a subsidy may not rely on the expiry of the four- or eight-year time limit in the course of judicial proceedings for enforcement which have been brought against him or her, since that issue can be assessed only in the context of an administrative-law action brought against the measure ordering repayment of the amounts received wrongly by reason of the establishment of an irregularity? … (3) [In the event that those questions are answered in the negative,] must the three-year limitation period provided for in Article 3(2) of Regulation No 2988/95 be regarded as a limitation period for the debt that is created by the measure requiring repayment of amounts wrongly received by reason of the occurrence of irregularities in the financing? Does that period start to run from the date on which that measure was adopted? … (4) Does Article 3 of Regulation No 2988/95 preclude national legislation according to which the three-year limitation period for the debt that is created by the measure requiring repayment of amounts wrongly received by reason of the occurrence of irregularities in the financing must start to run from the date on which that measure was adopted and must be interrupted by a notification of the institution of proceedings for the enforced recovery of those amounts, remaining suspended until such time as those proceedings culminate in a definitive or final decision in cases involving a complaint, a challenge, an appeal or an opposition, where these suspend recovery of the debt?’
17

That being so, having regard to the judgment of 28 July 2016, United Video Properties (C‑57/15, EU:C:2016:611), the referring court expresses doubt as to the consistency of Paragraph 140(3) of the MarkenG with Article 3(1) and Article 14 of Directive 2004/48. It submits, first, that the automatic reimbursement of costs of a patent lawyer whose involvement in the matter was, on the facts, not ‘necessary for the purpose of obtaining the legal remedy sought’ might prove to be unnecessarily costly, in particular, in the scenario where the task carried out by that patent lawyer could have been performed in the same way by the specialised intellectual property lawyer already appointed by the party concerned. In that regard, the referring court states that, as regards the out-of-court legal action, and in particular the assistance of the patent lawyer for the cease-and-desist warning issued under trade mark law, that court has already held that the application by analogy of Paragraph 140(3) of the MarkenG was not possible and that, consequently, the costs relating to the assistance of that patent lawyer are recoverable only if his or her assistance was necessary.
7

Article 3 of the directive, entitled ‘Rights of the consumer’, read as follows: ‘1. The seller shall be liable to the consumer for any lack of conformity which exists at the time the goods were delivered. 2. In the case of a lack of conformity, the consumer shall be entitled to have the goods brought into conformity free of charge by repair or replacement, in accordance with paragraph 3, or to have an appropriate reduction made in the price or the contract rescinded with regard to those goods, in accordance with paragraphs 5 and 6. 3. In the first place, the consumer may require the seller to repair the goods or he may require the seller to replace them, in either case free of charge, unless this is impossible or disproportionate. A remedy shall be deemed to be disproportionate if it imposes costs on the seller which, in comparison with the alternative remedy, are unreasonable, taking into account: – the value the goods would have if there were no lack of conformity, – the significance of the lack of conformity, and – whether the alternative remedy could be completed without significant inconvenience to the consumer. Any repair or replacement shall be completed within a reasonable time and without any significant inconvenience to the consumer, taking account of the nature of the goods and the purpose for which the consumer required the goods. 4. The terms “free of charge” in paragraphs 2 and 3 refer to the necessary costs incurred to bring the goods into conformity, particularly the cost of postage, labour and materials. 5. The consumer may require an appropriate reduction of the price or have the contract rescinded: – if the consumer is entitled to neither repair nor replacement, or – if the seller has not completed the remedy within a reasonable time, or – if the seller has not completed the remedy without significant inconvenience to the consumer. 6. The consumer is not entitled to have the contract rescinded if the lack of conformity is minor.’
28

According to the settled case-law of the Court, in the procedure laid down in Article 267 TFEU, which provides for cooperation between national courts and the Court of Justice, it is for the latter to provide the referring court with an answer which will be of use to it and enable it to decide the case before it. With that in mind, the Court may have to reformulate the questions referred to it. The fact that a national court has, formally speaking, worded a question referred for a preliminary ruling with reference to certain provisions of EU law does not prevent the Court from providing the national court with all the points of interpretation which may be of assistance in adjudicating on the case pending before it, whether or not that court has referred to them in its questions. In that regard, it is for the Court to extract from all the information provided by the national court, in particular from the grounds of the decision referring the questions, the points of EU law which require interpretation, having regard to the subject matter of the dispute (judgment of 28 March 2019, Cogeco Communications, C‑637/17, EU:C:2019:263, paragraph 35 and the case-law cited).