Sachsenmilch AG v Oberfinanzdirektion Nürnberg.
Date: 2006-06-08
15. In that regard, it is clear from settled case-law that the procedure provided for in Article 234 EC is an instrument of cooperation between the Court of Justice and national courts by means of which the former provides the latter with interpretation of such Community law as is necessary for them to give judgment in cases upon which they are called to adjudicate. It follows that it is for the national courts alone which are seised of the case and are responsible for the judgment to be delivered to determine, in view of the special features of each case, both the need for a preliminary ruling in order to enable them to give their judgment and the relevance of the questions which they put to the Court (see, in particular, Case C-403/98 Monte Arcosu  [2001] ECR I-103, paragraph 21, and Case C-500/04 Proxxon  [2006] ECR I-0000, paragraph 17).
18. It should be observed at the outset that, as the Commission has rightly submitted, those questions must be examined not, as suggested by the wording of the first question, in the light of Regulation No 1789/2003, but in the light of Regulation No 1832/2002 since the national decision which established the contested tariff classification was adopted under the latter regulation. The relevant provisions of those two regulations are, however, essentially the same as far as the subheadings of the CN in question are concerned.
19. It should then be noted that, when the Court is requested to give a preliminary ruling on a matter of tariff classification, its task is to provide the national court with guidance on the criteria which will enable the latter to classify the products at issue correctly in the CN, rather than to effect that classification itself, a fortiori since the Court does not necessarily have available to it all the information which is essential in that regard. In any event, the national court is in a better position to do so (Joined Cases C-260/00 to C-263/00 Lohmann and Medi Bayreuth  [2002] ECR I-10045, paragraph 26, and Proxxon , paragraph 23).
22. According to settled case-law, in the interests of legal certainty and ease of verification, the decisive criterion for the classification of goods for customs tariff purposes is in general to be found in their objective characteristics and properties as defined in the wording of the relevant heading of the CN and of the notes to the sections or chapters (Case C‑396/02 DFDS  [2004] ECR I-8439, paragraph 27, and Case C-445/04 Possehl Erzkontor [2005] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 19).
23. The Explanatory Notes to the CN and those to the HS are an important aid for interpreting the scope of the various tariff headings but do not have legally binding force ( Possehl Erzkontor , paragraph 20).
26. As that subheading is more specific than subheading 0406 90 of the CN, which refers to ‘[o]ther cheese’, it must, in principle, be preferred to subheading 0406 90, as the Court has already held with regard to subheading 0406 20 of the CN relating to ‘grated or powdered cheese’, which is next to subheading 0406 10 (see Case C-164/95 Eru Portuguesa [1997] ECR I-3441, paragraph 17).
29. The general rule on cheese (Codex Stan A‑6‑1978, rev. 1‑1999, amended in 2003) laid down by the Codex Alimentarius, which is intended to provided guidance on defining the characteristics of certain foodstuffs (see Case 286/86 Deserbais  [1988] ECR 4907, paragraph 15), provides that ripened cheese is cheese that must be kept for a certain period at a temperature and in the conditions necessary for the biochemical and physical changes that are characteristic of the cheese to take place.
34. Accordingly, contrary to Sachsenmilch’s contention, there is nothing to preclude the national court from taking account, should they exist, of objective sensory analyses governed by national and international norms, provided such norms make it possible to determine whether a cheese has undergone a process which has affected one of its objective characteristics and properties as a fresh cheese (see, to that effect, Case C-233/88 Van de Kolk  [1990] ECR I-265, paragraph 13). In the present case, it is clear from the order for reference that norms of that kind exist for the analysis of pizza mozzarella in block form.
37. The answer to the questions referred for a preliminary ruling must therefore be that subheading 0406 10 of the CN in Annex I to Regulation No 2658/87, as amended by Regulation No 1832/2002, must be interpreted as meaning that it applies to pizza mozzarella in block form that was stored after its manufacture for one to two weeks at 2 to 4°C unless that storage is sufficient for such mozzarella to undergo a process at the end of which it has acquired one or more new objective characteristics or properties, in particular with regard to its composition, appearance or taste. It is for the national court to determine whether those conditions are satisfied.
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