Gmina Wrocław v Minister Finansów.
Date: 2015-09-29
25. In determining the scope of a provision of EU law, its wording, context and objectives must all be taken into account. Furthermore, it follows from the need for uniform application of EU law and from the principle of equality that the terms of a provision of EU law which makes no express reference to the law of the Member States for the purpose of determining its meaning and scope must normally be given an autonomous and uniform interpretation throughout the European Union (judgment in Commission  v Sweden , C‑480/10, EU:C:2013:263, paragraph 33 and the case-law cited).
26. The VAT Directive, which seeks to establish a common system of VAT, confers a very wide scope on VAT. In order to ensure the uniform application of that directive, it is important that the terms which define that scope, such as the terms ‘taxable transactions’, ‘taxable persons’ and ‘economic activities’, are interpreted in an autonomous and uniform manner, regardless of the purpose and results of the transactions concerned (see, to that effect, judgment in Halifax and Others , C‑255/02, EU:C:2006:121, paragraphs 48 to 56).
28. The terms used in that provision, in particular the term ‘any person who’, give the notion of ‘taxable person’ a broad definition focused on independence in the pursuit of an economic activity to the effect that, as the Advocate General has observed in points 28 to 29 of his Opinion, all persons — natural or legal, both public and private, even entities devoid of legal personality — which, in an objective manner, satisfy the criteria set out in that provision are regarded as being taxable persons for the purposes of VAT.
29. However, in derogation from that general rule on treatment as taxable persons laid down in Article 9(1) of the VAT Directive, Article 13(1) of that directive excludes bodies governed by public law from the capacity as a taxable person in respect of activities or economic transactions in which they engage as a public authority, unless their treatment as non-taxable persons leads to significant distortions of competition (judgment in Commission  v Netherlands , C‑79/09, EU:C:2010:171, paragraph 77).
30. Thus, for a body governed by public law to be regarded as a taxable person within the meaning of the VAT Directive, it must, in accordance with Article 9(1) of that directive, independently carry out any economic activity.
33. In order to establish whether such an entity independently carries out economic activities, it is necessary to ascertain, as is apparent from the case-law of the Court, whether, in the pursuit of those activities, it is in an employer-employee relationship vis-à-vis the municipality to which it is linked (see, to that effect, judgments in Commission  v Netherlands , 235/85, EU:C:1987:161, paragraph 14; Ayuntamiento de Sevilla , C‑202/90, EU:C:1991:332, paragraph 10; FCE Bank , C‑210/04, EU:C:2006:196, paragraphs 35 to 37; and Commission  v Spain , C‑154/08, EU:C:2009:695, paragraphs 103 to 107).
34. In that regard, as the Advocate General has observed in points 40 and 41 of his Opinion, in order to assess whether that employer-employee relationship exists, it is necessary to check whether the person concerned performs his activities in his own name, on his own behalf and under his own responsibility, and whether he bears the economic risk associated with carrying out those activities. In order to find that the activities at issue are independent, the Court has thus taken into account the complete absence of any employer-employee relationship between public authorities and operators who were not integrated into the public administration, as well as the fact that such operators acted on their own account and under their own responsibility, were free to arrange how they performed their work and themselves received the emoluments which made up their income (see, to that effect, judgments in Commission  v Netherlands , 235/85, EU:C:1987:161, paragraph 14; Heerma , C‑23/98, EU:C:2000:46, paragraph 18; and van der Steen , C‑355/06, EU:C:2007:615, paragraphs 21 to 25).
36. The use of expressions which are not exactly the same in all the language versions of Article 9(1) of the VAT Directive does not call that finding into question. Both the expression ‘independently’ and the expression ‘autonomously’ express the need to assess the employer-employee relationship in the pursuit of an economic activity.
44. It should be recalled in this regard that, according to settled case-law, the interpretation which, in the exercise of the jurisdiction conferred on it by Article 267 TFEU, the Court gives to a rule of EU law clarifies and defines the meaning and scope of that rule as it must be or ought to have been understood and applied from the date of its entry into force. It follows that the rule as thus interpreted may, and must, be applied by the courts to legal relationships which arose and were established before the judgment ruling on the request for interpretation, provided that in other respects the conditions for bringing a dispute relating to the application of that rule before the courts having jurisdiction are satisfied (judgment in Balazs , C‑401/13 and C‑432/13, EU:C:2015:26, paragraph 49 and the case-law cited).
45. It is only quite exceptionally that the Court may, in application of the general principle of legal certainty inherent in the EU legal order, be moved to restrict for any person concerned the opportunity of relying on a provision which it has interpreted with a view to calling into question legal relationships established in good faith. Two essential criteria must be fulfilled before such a limitation can be imposed, namely that those concerned should have acted in good faith and that there should be a risk of serious difficulties (judgment in Balazs , C‑401/13 and C‑432/13, EU:C:2015:26, paragraph 50 and the case-law cited).