larimo/cjeu-paragraph-retrieval huggingface dataset:
Edgard Arendt v European Parliament.
Date: 1988-05-17
7 The applicant argues in this respect that whereas the letter of 27 May 1986 communicating the contested decision stated that he had failed to obtain sufficient marks in relation to "general education" and "specific experience", an additional explanatory letter from the Chairman of the Selection Board, dated 17 December 1986, referred only to insufficient "specific experience ".
8 It should however be noted that this last letter merely replied, in detail, to a complaint made by the applicant in letters of 3 June and 20 June 1986 in which he stressed the fact that since 1 August 1984 he had been carrying out accountancy duties in the Social Affairs Division of the European Parliament which, he maintained, had helped to provide him with sufficient specific experience in the field of accountancy . Far from being contradictory, the explanation given merely clarified, at the applicant' s request, the reasons which led the Selection Board to reject his candidature .
Marc Rousseau v Court of Auditors of the European Communities.
Date: 1988-05-31
8 With regard to the alleged failure to comply with the preliminary procedure laid down in Article 90 ( 2 ) of the Staff Regulations, the fact that Mr Rousseau, who according to his evidence had no legal assistance at the relevant time, described his letter to the President of the Court of Auditors as a "request" under Article 90 ( 1 ) of the Staff Regulations cannot be considered decisive . It is clear from the terms of that letter that Mr Rousseau was protesting in a specific manner against the decisions adopted with regard to him, which had already entered into force . It thus constitutes a complaint within the meaning of Article 90 ( 2 ) of the Staff Regulations .
Hellenic Republic v Commission of the European Communities.
Date: 1988-06-07
8 It is undisputed that as a result of the interest rebate, the interest rates generally applicable to commercial transactions in Greece are reduced only in respect of loans for exports . The contested repayment of interest therefore constitutes an aid for Greek export undertakings in so far as they benefit from an economic advantage which reduces the expenses incurred in respect of their sales on the markets of other Member States . Regard should be had in that connection to the decision of the Court ( judgment of 10 December 1969 in Joined Cases 6 and 11/69 Commission v French Republic (( 1969 )) ECR 523 ) according to which a preferential rediscount rate for exports granted by a Member State only for exports of its own products constitutes an aid within the meaning of Article 92 .
9 As regards the argument that the repayment of interest is merely monetary in character, it is sufficient to point out that the Court has held ( Case 11/69, supra, and judgment of 9 June 1982 in Case 95/81 Commission v Italy (( 1982 )) ECR 2187 ) that the exercise by the Member States of the powers retained by them in the monetary field do not permit them unilaterally to adopt measures prohibited by the Treaty .
10 Finally, it is irrelevant that, by comparison with the previous export credit system, the repayment of interest is economically neutral in its effect on the competitiveness of Greek exports and that the Commission took no action regarding the previous system, since the present system, viewed independently from its predecessor, favours certain undertakings . It follows that the first submission must be rejected .
The second submission
12 The Court has consistently held ( see in particular the judgment of 30 January 1985 in Case 290/83 Commission v French Republic (( 1985 )) ECR 439 ) that an aid need not necessarily be financed from State resources to be classified as a State aid . Article 92 covers all aid granted by States or through State resources and there is no necessity to draw any distinction according to whether the aid is granted directly by the State or by public or private bodies established or appointed by it to administer the aid .
15 As the Court has already held ( judgment of 13 March 1985 in Joined Cases 296 and 318/82 Kingdom of the Netherlands and Leeuwarder Papierwarenfabriek BV v Commission (( 1982 )) ECR 809 ) the very circumstances in which the aid is granted may be sufficient to show that the aid is capable of affecting trade between Member States or of distorting or threatening to distort competition . However, the Commission must set out the circumstances in the statement of reasons for its decision .
Commission of the European Communities v Hellenic Republic.
Date: 1988-06-07
14 The defendant has not supported its submission that it was absolutely impossible to implement the decision with specific arguments of such a nature as to show that the contested interest rebate system could not have been abolished within the time-limit fixed by the decision or, at the very least, within a reasonable time . In that regard, it is sufficient to note that the financial difficulties with which exporters could be confronted as a result of the withdrawal of the unlawful aid do not make it absolutely impossible to implement the decision . Consequently, the defendant' s submission must be rejected as unfounded .
Androniki Vlachou v Court of Auditors of the European Communities.
Date: 1988-06-08
23 This submission cannot be accepted . It is for the appointing authority to choose, in accordance with the order of preference set out in Article 29 of the Staff Regulations, the most appropriate method of filling a vacant post . To that end, as the Court has already emphasized on several occasions ( see the judgment of 25 November 1976 in Case 123/75 Kuester v Parliament (( 1976 )) ECR 1701, and the judgment of 14 July 1983 in Case 10/82 Mogensen v Commission (( 1983 )) ECR 2397 ), the appointing authority has a wide discretion for the purpose of finding the candidate with the highest standard of ability, efficiency and integrity .
27 As the Court has already stated ( see the judgment of 25 November 1976 in Case 123/75 Kuester v Parliament (( 1976 )) ECR 1701 ), a misuse of powers is not deemed to exist unless it is proved that the appointing authority in taking the measure in question has followed an objective other than that pursued by the rules in question . In this case, the applicant' s allegation, which is unsupported by any evidence, is not sufficient to establish the existence of a misuse of powers, particularly since it is clear from the foregoing considerations that the contested decisions had been adopted by the appointing authority in the exercise of its discretion and in compliance with a previous judgment given by the Court .
Commission of the European Communities v Italian Republic.
Date: 1988-06-09
6 As is indicated in Article 2 ( 3 ) ( c ) to ( e ) of Commission Directive 70/50/EEC of 22 December 1969, based on the provisions of Article 33 ( 7 ), on the abolition of measures which have an effect equivalent to quantitative restrictions on imports and are not covered by other provisions adopted in pursuance of the EEC Treaty ( Official Journal, English Special Edition 1970 ( I ), p . 17 ), Article 30 of the Treaty precludes national price control schemes in so far as such schemes fix price components differently for domestic and imported products, to the detriment of the latter, preclude any increase in the price of the imported product corresponding to the supplementary costs and charges inherent in importation or fix the prices of products solely on the basis of the cost price or the quality of domestic products at such a level as to create a hinderance to importation .
7 That interpretation of Article 30 has been confirmed in a consistent line of decided cases, in particular, by the judgment of 29 November 1983 in Case 181/82 Roussel Laboratoria BV and Others v Netherlands (( 1983 )) ECR 3849 and the judgment of 29 January 1985 in Case 231/83 Cullet v Leclerc (( 1985 )) ECR 305 .
Dansk Denkavit ApS v Danish Ministry of Agriculture.
Date: 1988-06-14
16 It follows that the directive was intended to harmonize all the material conditions for marketing feedingstuffs as regards the presence or absence of additives and as regards marking in that respect, including criteria of quality . Accordingly, the Member States no longer had the power to fix at national level such criteria of quality and if a Member State considered specific measures relating to the identification and purity of authorized substances to be necessary it had to have recourse to the Community procedure provided for that purpose .
22 Article 30 of the Treaty provides that quantitative restrictions on imports and all measures having equivalent effect are to be prohibited . The Court has consistently held that all commercial rules of Member States are to be regarded as measures having an effect equivalent to quantitative restrictions if they are capable of hindering, directly or indirectly, actually or potentially trade within the Community .
32 As has been stated above, Directive 70/524, as amended up to the adoption of Directive 84/587, does not prevent Member States from requiring traders to obtain an authorization . However, the exemption provided for in Article 36 of the Treaty with regard to measures of control in regard to traders is solely concerned with restrictions on imports or exports and measures having an equivalent effect . It may not be extended to customs duties or charges having an equivalent effect which, for their part, fall outside the compass of Article 36 . It follows that the question whether such charges are permissible must be appraised in relation to Article 9 or, as the case may be, Article 95 of the Treaty .
P. Bork International A/S, in liquidation v Foreningen af Arbejdsledere I Danmark, acting on behalf of Birger E. Petersen, and Jens E. Olsen and others v Junckers Industrier A/S.
Date: 1988-06-15
13 In that regard, it must be borne in mind that, according to the established case-law of the Court, as most recently confirmed by the judgment of 5 May 1988 in Joined Cases 144 and 145/87 Berg and Busschers (( 1988 )) ECR 0000, the purpose of Directive 77/187 is to ensure that the rights of employees are safeguarded in the event of a change of employer by enabling them to remain in employment with the new employer on the terms and conditions agreed with the transferor . The directive is therefore applicable wherever, in the context of contractual relations, there is a change in the legal or natural person who is responsible for carrying on the business and who incurs the obligations of an employer towards employees of the undertaking .
17 It must also be borne in mind in that connection that, as the Court has consistently held ( see the aforesaid judgment in Ny Moelle Kro ), unless otherwise expressly provided, Directive 77/187 may be relied upon solely by workers whose contract of employment or employment relationship is in existence at the time of the transfer . Whether or not such a contract or relationship exists at that time must be assessed on the basis of national law subject, however, to compliance with the mandatory provisions of the directive concerning protection of employees from dismissal as a result of the transfer .
18 Accordingly, the employees of the undertaking whose contract of employment or employment relationship was terminated with effect from a date prior to that of the transfer, contrary to Article 4 ( 1 ) of the directive, must be regarded as still in the employ of the undertaking on the date of the transfer, with the result, in particular, that the employer' s obligations towards them are automatically transferred from the transferor to the transferee in accordance with Article 3 ( 1 ) of the directive . In order to determine whether the employees were dismissed solely as a result of the transfer, contrary to Article 4 ( 1 ), it is necessary to take into consideration the objective circumstances in which the dismissal took place and, in particular, in a case such as this, the fact that it took effect on a date close to that of the transfer and that the employees in question were taken on again by the transferee .
Commission of the European Communities v Ireland.
Date: 1988-06-21
9 That argument cannot be upheld . In the context of the balance of powers between the institutions laid down in the Treaty, it is not for the Court to consider what objectives are pursued in an action brought under Article 169 of the Treaty . Its role is to decide whether or not the Member State in question has failed to fulfil its obligations as alleged . As the Court held in its judgment of 10 December 1968 in Case 7/68 Commission v Italian Republic (( 1968 )) ECR 423, an action against a Member State for failure to fulfil its obligations, the bringing of which is a matter for the Commission in its entire discretion, is objective in nature .
Substance
15 The identification of social reasons is in principle a matter of political choice for the Member States and can be the subject-matter of supervision at the Community level only in so far as, by distorting that concept, it leads to measures which because of their effects and their true objectives lie outside its scope .
The phrase "for the benefit of the final consumer"
18 Under the general scheme of value-added tax the final consumer is the person who acquires goods or services for personal use, as opposed to an economic activity, and thus bears the tax . It follows that having regard to the social purpose of Article 17 the term "final consumer" can be applied only to a person who does not use exempted goods or services in the course of an economic activity . The provision of goods or services at a stage higher in the production or distribution chain which is nevertheless sufficiently close to the consumer to be of advantage to him must also be considered to be for the benefit of the final consumer as so defined .
The applicability to the products in issue of Articles 27 and 25 of the Sixth Directive
Commission of the European Communities v United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Date: 1988-06-21
9 That argument cannot be upheld . In the context of the balance of powers between the institutions laid down in the Treaty, it is not for the Court to consider what objectives are pursued in an action brought under Article 169 of the Treaty . Its role is to decide whether or not the Member State in question has failed to fulfil its obligation as alleged . As the Court held in its judgment of 10 December 1968 ( Case 7/68 Commission v Italian Republic (( 1968 )) ECR 423 ), an action against a Member State for failure to fulfil its obligations, the bringing of which is a matter for the Commission in its entire discretion, is objective in nature .
Substance
14 The identification of social reasons is in principle a matter of political choice for the Member States and can be the subject-matter of supervision at the Community level only in so far as, by distorting that concept, it leads to measures which because of their effects and their true objectives lie outside its scope .
The phrase "for the benefit of the final consumer"
17 Under the general scheme of VAT the final consumer is the person who acquires goods or services for personal use, as opposed to an economic activity, and thus bears the tax . It follows that having regard to the social purpose of Article 17 the term "final consumer" can be applied only to a person who does not use exempted goods or services in the course of an economic activity . The provision of goods or services at a stage higher in the production or distribution chain which is nevertheless sufficiently close to the consumer to be of advantage to him must also be considered to be for the benefit of the final consumer as so defined .
The zero rates at issue
A - Group 1 - Food ( 2 . Animal feedingstuffs; 3 . Seeds or other means of propagation of plants comprised in Items 1 or 2; 4 . Live animals of a kind generally used as, or yielding or producing, food for human consumption )
Steven Malcolm Brown v The Secretary of State for Scotland.
Date: 1988-06-21
18 Subject to that reservation, it must be stated that, at the present stage of development of Community law, assistance given to students for maintenance and for training falls in principle outside the scope of the EEC Treaty for the purposes of Article 7 thereof . It is, on the one hand, a matter of educational policy, which is not as such included in the spheres entrusted to the Community institutions ( see Gravier ) and, on the other, a matter of social policy, which falls within the competence of the Member States in so far as it is not covered by specific provisions of the EEC Treaty ( see judgment of 9 July 1987 in Joined Cases 281/85, 283 to 285/85 and 287/85 Federal Republic of Germany v Commission (( 1987 )) ECR 3203 - Migration policy ).
21 It must be emphasized in the first place that the concept of worker within the meaning of Article 48 of the EEC Treaty and Regulation No 1612/68 has a specific Community meaning . As the Court has already held, any person who pursues an activity which is effective and genuine, to the exclusion of activities on such a small scale as to be regarded as purely marginal and ancillary, is to be treated as a worker ( judgments of 23 March 1982 in Case 53/81 Levin v Staatssecretaris van Justitie (( 1982 )) ECR 1035 and of 3 June 1986 in Case 139/85 Kempf v Staatssecretaris van Justitie (( 1986 )) ECR 1741, at p . 1746 ). The essential characteristic of the employment relationship is that for a certain period of time a person performs services for and under the direction of another person in return for which he receives remuneration ( judgment of 3 July 1986 in Case 66/85 Lawrie-Blum v Land Baden-Wuerttemburg (( 1986 )) ECR 2121 ).
30 The fifth recital in the preamble to Regulation No 1612/68 indicates that that regulation is intended to establish freedom of movement for workers by, inter alia, eliminating obstacles to the mobility of workers, in particular as regards the worker' s right to be joined by his family and the conditions for the integration of his family into the host country . It follows that Article 12 of the regulation must be interpreted as meaning that it grants rights only to a child who has lived with his parents or either one of them in a Member State whilst at least one of his parents resided there as a worker . It cannot therefore create rights for the benefit of a worker' s child who was born after the worker ceased to work and reside in the host State .
Commission of the European Communities v Italian Republic.
Date: 1988-06-21
12 Moreover, the Court has consistently held ( see inter alia the judgment of 30 January 1985 in Case 143/83 Commission v Kingdom of Denmark (( 1985 )) ECR 427 ) that the principles of legal certainty and the protection of individuals require, in areas covered by Community law, that the Member States' legal rules should be worded unequivocally so as to give the persons concerned a clear and precise understanding of their rights and obligations and enable national courts to ensure that those rights and obligations are observed .
Commission of the European Communities v Kingdom of Belgium.
Date: 1988-06-21
6 The complaint relating to the failure to adopt measures transposing the directive in relation to travel agents must be considered by the Court . Even if the legislation adopted by the Kingdom of Belgium has made good the failure, which is denied by the Commission since the competent national authorities and bodies required by Articles 4 and 7 of the directive have not yet been appointed, the Court has consistently held that where a default has been remedied after the period prescribed under the second paragraph of Article 169 of the Treaty an interest still subsists in pursuing the action .
Commission of the European Communities v Hellenic Republic.
Date: 1988-06-21
7 The monetary objective of the contested measure is not such as to justify it . As the Court has consistently held ( see, most recently, the judgment of 7 June 1988 in Case 57/86 Hellenic Republic v Commission (( 1988 )) ECR 0000 ), the fact that Member States retain certain monetary powers does not entitle them to take unilateral measures prohibited by the Treaty .
8 The prohibition on taking unilateral national measures having an effect equivalent to quantitative restrictions was extended to trade with non-member countries by Article 20 ( 2 ) of Regulation No 1837/80, cited above, which forms the basic regulation on the common organization of the market in sheepmeat and goatmeat . That regulation also set up a price system providing, inter alia, for a basic price and an intervention price and the Court consistently held ( see primarily the judgment of 6 November 1979 in Case 10/79 Toffoli v Regione Veneto (( 1979 )) ECR 3301 ) that in sectors covered by a common organization of the market, and a fortiori when that organization is based on a common price system, Member States can no longer take action, through national provisions adopted unilaterally, affecting the machinery of price formation at the same production or marketing stage established under the common organization . It must therefore be held that the contested Greek measure is also contrary to Regulation No 1837/80 .
Sportex GmbH & Co. v Oberfinanzdirektion Hamburg.
Date: 1988-06-21
7 Given that the goods at issue are composed of different materials and that the two subheadings mentioned above are both general in scope, the sole provision to which recourse may be had for the purpose of classifying the goods is Rule 3 ( b ) of the Rules for the Interpretation of the Nomenclature . Under that provision, "mixtures, composite goods consisting of different components, and goods put up in sets, which cannot be classified by reference to Rule 3 ( a ), shall be classified as if they consisted of the material or component which gives them their essential character in so far as this criterion is applicable ".
8 In accordance with that general rule of interpretation, it is necessary, in carrying out the tariff classification of a product, to identify, from among the materials of which it is composed, the one which gives it its essential character . This may be done by determining whether the product would retain its characteristic properties if one or other of its constituents were removed from it .
Commission of the European Communities v Italian Republic.
Date: 1988-06-28
8 The macro-economic statistics relating to flat-rate farmers alone, to which the aforementioned provision refers, comprise inputs ( intermediate consumption and gross fixed-asset formation ) and outputs, ( final production, including own consumption ), together with the total amount of taxes relating to inputs . The flat-rate compensation percentages are obtained by dividing the latter amount by outputs .
Commission of the European Communities v Council of the European Communities.
Date: 1988-06-28
3 To ensure that all officials, whatever their place of employment, obtain equivalent purchasing power from the remuneration which they receive, the first paragraph of Article 64 of the Staff Regulations provides that : "An official' s remuneration expressed in Belgian francs shall ... be weighted at a rate above, below or equal to 100% depending on living conditions in the various places of employment ". The second paragraph of Article 64 states that the weightings are to be adopted by the Council, acting on a proposal from the Commission .
25 However, the principle of equality of treatment underlying that provision requires the effect of the new weightings to be made retroactive to the date to which the verification relates . If the adjustment were not retroactive, inequalities in the purchasing power of officials found to exist with respect to periods which may extend over several years would never be eliminated, which would be incompatible with the principle of equality of treatment .