Friesland Coberco Dairy Foods BV v Inspecteur van de Belastingdienst/Douane Noord/kantoor Groningen.
Date: 2006-05-11
35. Article 234 EC provides that the Court has jurisdiction to give preliminary rulings concerning the validity and interpretation of acts of the Community institutions and the European Central Bank.
36. According to settled case-law, that provision confers on the Court jurisdiction to give a preliminary ruling on the validity and interpretation of all acts of the institutions of the Community without exception (Case C-322/88 Grimaldi  [1989] ECR 4407, paragraph 8).
39. That interpretation is confirmed by the case-law of the Court relating to other types of opinions, of a similar kind, such as, in particular, the opinions of the Committee on Common Customs Tariff Nomenclature established by Council Regulation (EEC) No 97/69 of 16 January 1969 on measures to be taken for uniform application of the nomenclature of the Common Customs Tariff (OJ, English Special Edition 1969(I), p. 12). It must be observed, as far as concerns the Committee’s conclusions, that, although they constitute an important means of ensuring the uniform application of the Customs Code by the customs authorities of the Member States and as such they may be considered as a valid aid to the interpretation of the Code, they do not have legally binding force (see, to that effect, Joined Cases 69/76 and 70/76 Dittmeyer  [1977] ECR 231, paragraph 4; Case 798/79 Chem-Tec  [1980] ECR 2639, paragraphs 11 and 12; and Case C‑35/93 Dr. Eisbein [1994] ECR I‑2655, paragraph 21).
47. It must be observed that the wording of Article 133(e) of the Customs Code, which refers to ‘the essential interests of Community producers of similar goods’ without stating whether it refers to producers of finished products or whether it also includes producers of raw materials used to produce those goods, does not provide a clear answer to the question referred, so that the context of that provision must be taken into account, namely the customs procedure with economic impact to which that provision applies and the objectives pursued by that procedure.
49. The arrangements for processing under customs control were adopted in order to avoid negative consequences for processing operations in the Community from an automatic application of the Community Customs Tariff. However, by conferring an advantage on Community processors, who are not, under those arrangements, bound to pay customs duties on goods imported from third countries, those arrangements may none the less adversely affect the essential interests of any Community producers of the raw materials used in the processing.
50. Given that potential conflict of interests, it is clear that the examination of the economic conditions laid down in Article 133(e) of the Customs Code is intended to take account of those various interests, namely those of the processors of raw materials and those of Community producers of similar goods. The objective of that provision is, as the Commission rightly submits, that the advantages of an authorisation for processing under customs control in respect of processing operations should be assessed in the light of the possible impact of the issue of such an authorisation on the situation of the Community producers of goods similar to those being processed.
51. That interpretation of the objective pursued by Article 133(e) of the Customs Code, that the interests of all Community producers must be protected, namely both those of the producers of finished products and those of the producers of raw materials used to produce those products, is, moreover, the only interpretation capable of taking account of the requirements of the common Community policies, including those of the common agricultural policy, as required by the third and fourth recitals in the preamble to the Customs Code.
52. Therefore, the answer to the first question must be that, in the assessment of an application for authorisation for processing under customs control pursuant to Article 133(e) of the Customs Code, account must be taken not only of the market for the finished products but also of the economic situation of the market for the raw materials used to produce those products.
The second question