Aprile Srl, in liquidation v Amministrazione delle Finanze dello Stato.
Date: 1995-10-05
16 By virtue of the cooperation between the Court of Justice and the national courts provided for by Article 177 of the Treaty and in accordance with settled case-law, it is solely for the national court before which the dispute has been brought, and which must assume responsibility for the subsequent judicial decision, to determine in the light of the particular circumstances of each case both the need for a preliminary ruling in order to enable it to deliver judgment and the relevance of the questions which it submits to the Court (see, for example, Case C-127/92 Enderby [1993] ECR I-5535, paragraph 10).
17 Consequently, where the questions submitted by the national court concern the interpretation of a provision of Community law, the Court of Justice is, in principle, bound to give a ruling (Case C-83/91 Meilicke [1992] ECR I-4871, paragraph 24).
19 However, that fact is not such as to render the questions inadmissible since it has been established that some of the goods imported by Aprile, which attracted the charges of which that company seeks reimbursement, originated in non-member countries.
20 In those circumstances, the Court, far from being asked to rule on a hypothetical problem, has sufficient information at its disposal regarding the circumstances with which the main proceedings are concerned to enable it to interpret the rules of Community law and to give a helpful answer to the questions submitted.
32 Regarding the first point, it must be borne in mind that the Customs Union, which, under Article 9 of the Treaty, is to cover all trade in goods, incorporates a Common Customs Tariff intended to bring about equalization of the charges borne at the external frontiers of the Community by products imported from non-member countries, in order to ensure that trade with such countries is not diverted and that the free movement of products between Member States and the conditions of competition between economic agents are not distorted.
34 Both the unicity of the Community customs territory and the uniformity of the common commercial policy would be seriously undermined if the Member States were authorized unilaterally to impose charges having equivalent effect to customs duties on imports from non-member countries.
35 It has thus been consistently held that the Member States have no right unilaterally to add national charges to the duties payable under the Community rules, otherwise such rules might be deprived of the requisite uniformity (see, in particular, Case 70/77 Simmenthal v Amministrazione delle Finanze dello Stato [1978] ECR 1453, Case 266/81 SIOT v Ministero delle Finanze [1983] ECR 731, Joined Cases 267/81, 268/81 and 269/81 Amminstrazione delle Finanze dello Stato v SPI and SAMI [1983] ECR 801, and Case C-209/89 Commission v Italy, cited above).
39 In those circumstances, there is no reason to interpret the prohibition of charges having an effect equivalent to customs duties differently depending on whether the trade concerned is conducted within the Community or with non-member countries under the abovementioned agreements or regulations governing particular sectors.
40 The purpose of such agreements is to consolidate and extend the economic relations existing between the parties and, in pursuit of that aim, to eliminate obstacles to trade, including import customs duties and charges having equivalent effect closely linked with them. Those agreements would be deprived of much of their effectiveness if the term charge having equivalent effect contained in them were to be interpreted as having a more limited scope than the same term appearing in the Treaty (Case C-163/90 Legros and Others [1992] ECR I-4625, paragraph 26).
41 A fortiori, the same reasoning must apply to determination of the scope of the prohibition of charges having equivalent effect contained in the regulations providing for common organization of the agricultural markets which govern trade with non-member countries (see, for example, Case 43/71 Politi v Italy [1971] ECR 1039, paragraph 7).