larimo/cjeu-paragraph-retrieval huggingface dataset:
Commission of the European Communities v Imperial Chemical Industries plc (ICI).
Date: 2000-04-06
38 It should be remembered that, since the intellectual component and the formal component form an inseparable whole, reducing the act to writing is the necessary expression of the intention of the adopting authority (Commission v BASF and Others, paragraph 70).
42 Contrary to the Commission's submissions, it is the mere failure to authenticate an act which constitutes the infringement of an essential procedural requirement and it is not necessary also to establish that the act is vitiated by some other defect or that the lack of authentication resulted in harm to the person relying on it.
49 It is for the Community court to decide in accordance with the provisions of the Rules of Procedure in regard to measures of inquiry whether it is necessary for such an act to be produced, in the light of the circumstances of the case.
50 As regards the Court of First Instance, it follows from Article 49 read in conjunction with Article 65(b) of its Rules of Procedure that a request for production of documents is a measure of inquiry which the Court may order at any stage of the proceedings.
51 If the Community court finds, on examining the act produced to it, that the act has not been properly authenticated, it must of its own motion raise the issue of infringement of an essential procedural requirement through failure to carry out proper authentication and, in consequence, annul the act vitiated by that defect.
62 At the very least it is indispensable for authentication to precede notification because otherwise there would always be a risk that the notified text would not be identical to the text adopted by the Commission.
Commission of the European Communities v Solvay SA.
Date: 2000-04-06
42 It should be remembered that, since the intellectual component and the formal component form an inseparable whole, reducing the act to writing is the necessary expression of the intention of the adopting authority (Commission v BASF and Others, paragraph 70).
55 If the Community court finds, on examining the act produced to it, that the act has not been properly authenticated, it must of its own motion raise the issue of infringement of an essential procedural requirement through failure to carry out proper authentication and, in consequence, annul the act vitiated by that defect.
Kingdom of Spain v Commission of the European Communities.
Date: 2000-04-06
27 It should be noted as a preliminary that, according to settled case-law, an action for annulment must be available in the case of all measures adopted by the institutions, whatever their nature or form, which are intended to have legal effects (see Case 22/70 Commission v Council [1971] ECR 263, paragraph 42, and Case C-366/88 France v Commission [1990] ECR I-3571, paragraph 8).
28 It should also be noted that, in principle, internal guidelines have effects only within the administration itself and give rise to no rights or obligations on the part of third parties. They do not therefore constitute acts adversely affecting any person, against which, as such, an action for annulment can be brought under Article 173 of the Treaty (see Case 190/84 Les Verts v European Parliament [1988] ECR 1017, paragraph 8, and France v Commission, cited above, paragraph 9).
34 Such an act of the Commission, which reflects only its intention to follow a particular line of conduct in the exercise of the power granted to it by Article 24 of the coordination regulation, cannot therefore be regarded as intended to produce legal effects (Case 114/86 United Kingdom v Commission [1988] ECR 5289, paragraph 13, and Case C-180/96 United Kingdom v Commission [1998] ECR I-2265, paragraph 28).
Commission of the European Communities v French Republic.
Date: 2000-04-06
30 It should be noted, however, that the amendment goes beyond a mere restatement, albeit in greater detail, of the initial complaints, thereby raising submissions before the Court which were not put forward during the pre-litigation procedure or in the application initiating the proceedings.
31 Those submissions are inadmissible because they are contrary to Article 38(1)(c) of the Rules of Procedure, under which the parties are required to state the subject-matter of the proceedings in the application initiating proceedings. Even though Article 42 of those Rules allows, subject to specific conditions, the introduction of new pleas in law, it is not permissible for a party to alter the very subject-matter of the proceedings. It follows that the merits of an application must be determined solely in the light of the submissions made in the application initiating the proceedings (see Case 232/78 Commission v France [1979] ECR 2729, paragraph 3).
32 Since the Commission must be deemed to have withdrawn its complaints in relation to Article 6(1) and (2) of the Directive, as initially formulated, the application must to that extent be dismissed as inadmissible.
39 On the other hand, as regards the Commission's uncontested statement that, contrary to the Directive, the position in France is that the environmental impact assessment may be waived in the case of certain projects because of their low cost or their purpose, it should be noted that such exemptions cannot be justified in terms of the discretion of Member States implied, according to the French Government, by the expression likely to have a significant effect [on the site]. On this point, it is enough to note that, in any event, that provision cannot authorise a Member State to enact national legislation which allows the environmental impact assessment obligation for development plans to be waived because of the low costs entailed or the particular type of work planned.
The Polo/Lauren Company LP v PT. Dwidua Langgeng Pratama International Freight Forwarders.
Date: 2000-04-06
26 According to Article 1(1)(a) of the Regulation, the latter applies where counterfeit or pirated goods are found when checks are made on goods placed under a suspensive procedure within the meaning of Article 84(1)(a) of the Community Customs Code. Under this latter provision, the term [suspensive] procedure designates, inter alia, external transit, that is to say, a customs procedure allowing the movement of non-Community goods from one point to another within the customs territory of the Community without those goods being subject to import duties or other charges under the Community Customs Code.
27 The Regulation is thus expressly designed to apply to goods passing through Community territory from a non-member country destined for another non-member country. It does not matter in this regard whether the holder of the right or those entitled under him have their registered office in a Member State or outside the Community.
34 After all, the external transit of non-Community goods is not completely devoid of effect on the internal market. It is, in fact, based on a legal fiction. Goods placed under this procedure are subject neither to the corresponding import duties nor to the other measures of commercial policy; it is as if they had not entered Community territory. In reality, they are imported from a non-member country and pass through one or more Member States before being exported to another non-member country. This operation is all the more liable to have a direct effect on the internal market as there is a risk that counterfeit goods placed under the external transit procedure may be fraudulently brought on to the Community market, as several Governments pointed out in their written observations and at the hearing.
Arben Kaba v Secretary of State for the Home Department.
Date: 2000-04-11
20 The aim of Regulation No 1612/68, namely freedom of movement for workers, requires, for such freedom to be guaranteed in compliance with the principles of liberty and dignity, the best possible conditions for the integration of the Community worker's family in the society of the host country (Case C-308/89 Di Leo [1990] ECR I-4185, paragraph 13).
27 The Court has consistently held that the equal treatment rule laid down in Article 48 of the Treaty and in Article 7 of Regulation No 1612/68 prohibits not only overt discrimination by reason of nationality but also all covert forms of discrimination which, by the application of other distinguishing criteria, lead in fact to the same result (see, inter alia, Case C-57/96 Meints [1997] ECR I-6689, paragraph 44).
30 As Community law stands at present, the right of nationals of a Member State to reside in another Member State is not unconditional. That situation derives, first, from the provisions on the free movement of persons contained in Title III of Part Three of the EC Treaty and the secondary legislation adopted to give them effect and, second, from the provisions of Part Two of the EC Treaty, and more particularly Article 8a of the EC Treaty (now, after amendment, Article 18 EC), which, whilst granting citizens of the Union the right to move and reside freely within the Member States, expressly refers to the limitations and conditions laid down in the Treaty and by the measures adopted to give it effect.
Commission of the European Communities v Kingdom of Spain.
Date: 2000-04-13
19 The Court has consistently held that Member States cannot rely on provisions, practices or circumstances in their own legal orders to justify failure to comply with the obligations and time-limits laid down by a directive (see, inter alia, Case C-144/97 Commission v France [1998] ECR I-613, paragraph 8).
20 Accordingly, neither the division of powers as between the State and the autonomous regions nor the obligation to comply with directions given in the national legislation transposing the directive into national law can serve to justify failure to comply with the obligations imposed by the directive.
22 To that, it must be observed that Member States may not plead their late implementation of the directive as justification for failure to fulfil, or late fulfilment of, other obligations imposed by the directive (see, to that effect, Case C-431/92 Commission v Germany [1995] ECR I-2189, paragraph 23).
W.N. v Staatssecretaris van Financiën.
Date: 2000-04-13
15 That literal interpretation of the terms of the provision in question corresponds to the purpose of the Directive. Since, in accordance with the sixth recital in the preamble thereto, the purpose of the Directive is the correct assessment of taxes on income and on capital in the different Member States, it provides for the exchange of any information which appears relevant for that purpose.
18 Furthermore, if the forwarding of the information to the other Member State were subject to the requirement that that State should have made the assessment to tax beforehand, that would imply that the authorities holding that information needed to have extensive knowledge of the factual and legal framework prevailing in that State. To make the obligation to exchange information spontaneously subject to such a requirement would run counter to the abovementioned objective of the Directive.
21 According to settled case-law, the various language versions of a provision of Community law must be uniformly interpreted, and thus, in the case of divergence between those versions, the provision in question must be interpreted by reference to the purpose and general scheme of the rules of which it forms part (see Case 30/77 Bouchereau [1977] ECR 1999, paragraph 14; Case C-449/93 Rockfon [1995] ECR I-4291, paragraph 28; and Case C-236/97 Skatteministeriet v Codan [1998] ECR I-8679, paragraph 28).
22 In the light of the purpose of the Directive, which is not only to combat tax evasion and avoidance, but also to enable a correct assessment of taxes on income and on capital to be effected in the different Member States, Article 4(1)(a) of the Directive must be interpreted as meaning that a Member State is without prior request to forward information to the tax authorities of another Member State where it has grounds for supposing that, without that information, an unjustified saving in tax might exist or be granted in that other State. In this context, it is not necessary for that saving to amount to a large sum.
Commission of the European Communities v Hellenic Republic.
Date: 2000-04-13
10 On the other hand, the Court does not have to take account of the failure to provide information concerning the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary in order to comply with the Directive, since the Hellenic Republic did not adopt those provisions within the period prescribed in the reasoned opinion (see, inter alia, Case C-303/93 Commission v Italy [1994] ECR I-1901, paragraph 6).
Commission of the European Communities v Antonio Giannini.
Date: 2000-04-13
16 In so far as the arguments of the Commission in support of its sole plea amount to challenging the Court's assessment of the facts, it is sufficient to recall that the Court has consistently held that under Article 168a of the EC Treaty (now Article 225 EC) and the first paragraph of Article 51 of the EC Statute of the Court of Justice an appeal may be based only on grounds relating to the infringement of rules of law, to the exclusion of any appraisal of the facts (see, inter alia, Case C-8/95 P New Holland Ford v Commission [1998] ECR I-3175, paragraph 25).
Commission of the European Communities v Grand Duchy of Luxemburg.
Date: 2000-04-13
8 In that connection, it must be borne in mind that, in proceedings under Article 226 EC, the question whether a Member State has failed to fulfil its obligations must be determined by reference to the situation prevailing in that Member State at the end of the period laid down in the reasoned opinion and that the Court cannot take account of any subsequent changes (see, inter alia, Case C-315/98 Commission v Italy [1999] ECR I-0000, paragraph 11).
Commission of the European Communities v French Republic.
Date: 2000-05-11
29 Any obligation systematically to notify such information is contrary to the freedom to market insurance products within the Community, which Directives 92/94 and 92/96 are designed to achieve.
Gascogne Limousin viandes SA v Office national interprofessionnel des viandes de l'élevage et de l'aviculture (Ofival).
Date: 2000-05-11
25 It must be pointed out that, as has consistently been held, the need to provide an interpretation of Community law which will be of use to the national court makes it necessary that the national court define the factual and legislative context of the questions it is asking or, at the very least, explain the factual circumstances on which those questions are based (see, in particular, judgments in Joined Cases C-320/90 to C-322/90 Telemarsicabruzzo and Others [1993] ECR I-393, paragraph 6 and Case C-67/96 Albany [1999] ECR I-5751, paragraph 39).
37 It is settled case-law that the prohibition of discrimination laid down in Article 40(3) of the Treaty is only a specific expression of the general principle of equality in Community law, which requires that comparable situations must not be treated differently and different situations must not be treated in the same way unless such treatment is objectively justified (judgment in Joined Cases C-296/93 and C-307/93 France and Ireland v Commission [1996] ECR I-795, paragraph 49).
38 With regard to judicial review of the conditions governing implementation of that prohibition, the Community institutions none the less have, in regard to the common agricultural policy, a wide discretion which reflects the responsibilities which the Treaty imposes on them (judgments in Joined Cases C-267/88 to C-285/88 Wuidart and Others [1990] ECR I-435, paragraph 14 and Case C-375/96 Zaninotto [1998] ECR I-6629, paragraph 46).
40 In the context of the pursuit of that objective, all Community producers, regardless of the Member State in which they are based, must together, in a spirit of solidarity and equality, bear the consequences of the decisions which the Community institutions are led to adopt in the exercise of their powers in order to respond to the risk of an imbalance which may arise in the market between production and market outlets (judgments cited above in France and Ireland v Commission, paragraph 50 and Zaninotto, paragraph 47).
44 Furthermore, the Court has also held that the fact that the adoption of a given measure under a common organisation of the market may affect producers in different ways, depending upon the particular nature of their production or on local conditions, cannot be regarded as discrimination prohibited by Article 40(3) of the Treaty if that measure is determined on the basis of objective rules, formulated to meet the needs of the general common organisation of the market (see, to that effect, judgment in Case 179/84 Bozzetti [1985] ECR 2301, paragraph 34).
French Republic v Ladbroke Racing Ltd and Commission of the European Communities.
Date: 2000-05-16
25 As for the aid attributable to the exemption from the housing levy, the Commission considered that, like the aid resulting from the exemption from the one-month delay rule for deduction of VAT, it qualified up to 1989 for the derogation provided for in Article 92(3)(c); thereafter, however, it had to be declared incompatible (part VII, point 3).
50 The judgment in Case T-358/94 Air France v Commission [1996] ECR II-2109, relied on by the appellant, provides very clear confirmation, at paragraph 67, that Article 92(1) of the Treaty covers all the financial means by which the public sector may actually support undertakings, irrespective of whether or not those means are permanent assets of the public sector. Consequently, even though the sums involved in the measure allowing the PMU access to unclaimed winnings are not permanently held by the Treasury, the fact that they constantly remain under public control, and therefore available to the competent national authorities, is sufficient for them to be categorised as State aid and for the measure to fall within Article 92(1) of the Treaty.
Patrick Zurstrassen v Administration des contributions directes.
Date: 2000-05-16
19 In the present case, the entitlement of married couples to joint assessment to tax is subject to a residence condition for both spouses, which Luxembourg nationals will be able to satisfy more easily than nationals of other Member States who have settled in the Grand Duchy in order to pursue an economic activity there, the members of whose families more frequently live outside Luxembourg.
21 It is true that, as the Court has previously held and the Spanish Government has pointed out, the situations of residents and of non-residents in a given State are not generally comparable as far as direct taxes are concerned, since income received in the territory of a State by a non-resident is in most cases only a part of his total income, which is concentrated at his place of residence, and a non-resident's personal ability to pay tax, determined by reference to his aggregate income and his personal and family circumstances, is more easy to assess at the place where his personal and financial interests are centred, which in general is the place where he has his usual abode (Case C-279/93 Finanzamt Köln-Altstadt v Schumacker [1995] ECR I-225, paragraphs 31 and 32, and Case C-391/97 Gschwind v Finanzamt Aachen-Außenstadt [1999] ECR I-5451, paragraph 22).
23 In those circumstances, the decision of the Luxembourg tax authorities to treat Mr Zurstrassen as a single taxpayer without dependants even though he is married and has children, on the ground that his wife, who does not have income of her own, has retained residence in another Member State, cannot be justified in the light of the considerations set out in paragraph 21 of this judgment. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is the only State which can take account of Mr Zurstrassen's personal and family circumstances since he is not only resident in that State but, additionally, is paid almost the entire earned income of the household there.
Commission of the European Communities v Kingdom of Belgium.
Date: 2000-05-18
40 Second, the Joint Declaration of the Council and the Commission on Article 12(2) of Directive 88/357 refers to a directive which Directive 92/49 has amended. In any event, that declaration, to which no reference is made in the wording of Article 55 of Directive 92/49, cannot be used for the purposes of interpreting that provision (see, to that effect, Case C-292/89 Antonissen [1991] ECR I-745, paragraph 18; and Case C-329/95 VAG Sverige [1997] ECR I-2675, paragraph 23).
Amministrazione delle Finanze dello Stato v Schiavon Silvano.
Date: 2000-05-18
37 In order to provide a satisfactory answer for a national court which has referred a question to it, the Court of Justice may deem it necessary to consider provisions of Community law to which the national court has not referred in its question (Case C-315/88 Bagli Pennacchiotti [1990] ECR I-1323, paragraph 10).
53 The Court has already held that the system whereby movement certificates are regarded as evidence of the origin of products is founded on the principle of mutual reliance and cooperation between the competent authorities of the exporting State and those of the importing State. A system of that kind cannot therefore function properly unless the procedures for administrative cooperation are strictly complied with (see, to that effect, Case C-432/92 The Queen v Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, ex parte Anastasiou and Others [1994] ECR I-3087, paragraphs 38 and 40).
KVS International BV v Minister van Landbouw, Natuurbeheer en Visserij.
Date: 2000-05-18
21 It should be recalled, at the outset, that according to the settled case-law of the Court, in interpreting a provision of Community law it is necessary to consider not only its wording but also the context in which it occurs and the objectives pursued by the rules of which it is part (see, in particular, Case 292/82 Merck v Hauptzollamt Hamburg-Jonas [1983] ECR 3781, paragraph 12, and C-223/98 Adidas [1999] ECR I-7081, paragraph 23).