Criminal proceedings against Gérard Jerôme Claeys.
Date: 1992-12-16
13 Articles 12 and 13 of the Treaty prohibit customs duties on imports and exports in trade between the Member States and charges having equivalent effect. With regard to customs duties and charges having equivalent effect on imports, the Court has stated (judgments in Case 77/72 Capolongo [1973] ECR 611, Compagnie Commerciale de l' Ouest and Sanders, cited above) that in principle that prohibition covers all charges levied at the time of or by reason of importation, which are imposed specifically on an imported product but not on a similar domestic product. It has also held that pecuniary charges intended to finance the activities of an agency governed by public law can constitute charges having equivalent effect.
15 Article 95 prohibits Member States from directly or indirectly imposing on the products of other Member States any internal taxation in excess of that imposed on similar domestic products or of such a nature as to afford protection to other domestic products. The applicability of the provision in question therefore depends on whether or not the internal taxation measure is discriminatory or protective (judgment in Compagnie Commerciale de l' Ouest, cited above, paragraph 25).
16 Where a charge is imposed on domestic and imported products according to the same criteria, the Court has consistently held that it may be necessary to take into account the purpose to which the revenue from the charge is put. Thus, if the revenue from such a charge is intended to finance activities for the special advantage of the taxed domestic product, it may follow that the charge imposed on the basis of the same criteria nevertheless constitutes discriminatory taxation in so far as the fiscal burden on the domestic products is neutralized by the advantages which the charge is used to finance, whilst the charge on the imported product constitutes a net burden (judgments in Case 73/79 Commission v Italy [1980] ECR 1533, paragraph 15, and in Compagnie Commerciale de l' Ouest, cited above, paragraph 26).
18 It is for the national court to determine whether the burden borne by the domestic product is wholly or partly offset by the use of the revenue from the charge in question (judgment in Compagnie Commerciale de l' Ouest, cited above, paragraph 28).
21 In order to give the national court a helpful answer concerning the provisions of the Treaty governing State aid, it must be observed that, although the parafiscal charge at issue may be prohibited either by Articles 12 and 13 or by Article 95 of the Treaty, the use of the revenue from it may nevertheless constitute State aid incompatible with the common market, if the conditions for the application of Article 92 of the Treaty, as interpreted by the Court in previous decisions, are met (judgments in Compagnie Commerciale de l' Ouest and in Sanders, cited above).
22 However, the Court has consistently held that the incompatibility of State aid with the common market is neither absolute nor unconditional. The intention of the Treaty, in providing through Article 93 for aid to be kept under constant review and supervised by the Commission, is that the finding that an aid may be incompatible with the common market is to be determined, subject to review by the Court, by means of an appropriate procedure which it is the Commission' s responsibility to set in motion. Individuals cannot therefore simply, on the basis of Article 92 alone, challenge the compatibility of an aid with Community law before the national courts or ask them to decide as the main or a subsidiary issue on any incompatibility (judgments in Iannelli, cited above, in Case 78/76 Steinike and Weinlig [1977] ECR 595, in Compagnie Commerciale de l' Ouest and in Sanders, both cited above).