Commission of the European Communities v Ireland.
Date: 2001-06-21
25 According to settled case-law, any measure of the Member States which is capable, directly or indirectly, actually or potentially, of hindering intra-Community trade must be considered to be a measure having equivalent effect to quantitative restrictions (Case 8/74 Dassonville [1974] ECR 837, paragraph 5).
26 According to the Cassis de Dijon case-law (Case 120/78 Rewe-Zentral [1979] ECR 649), in the absence of harmonisation of legislation, obstacles to free movement of goods which are the consequence of applying, to goods coming from other Member States where they are lawfully manufactured and marketed, rules that lay down requirements to be met by such goods (such as those relating to designation, form, size, weight, composition, presentation, labelling, packaging) constitute measures of equivalent effect prohibited by Article 30, even if those rules apply without distinction to all products, unless their application can be justified by a public-interest objective taking precedence over the free movement of goods (Case C-293/93 Houtwipper [1994] ECR I-4249, paragraph 11).
27 The Court has already held that national legislation which requires articles of precious metal imported from other Member States, in which they are lawfully traded and hallmarked in accordance with the legislation of those States, to be given an additional hallmark in the importing Member State, renders the imports more difficult and costly (Houtwipper, cited above, paragraph 13).
29 As regards a possible justification for the restrictive effects of the Irish legislation, it is true that the requirement that an importer cause to be affixed on articles of precious metal a hallmark indicating their fineness is in principle of a nature such as to ensure effective protection for consumers and to promote fair trading (Houtwipper, cited above, paragraph 14).
30 However, the Court stated in its judgment in Case 220/81 (Robertson and Others [1982] ECR 2349, paragraph 12), that a Member State cannot require a fresh hallmark to be affixed to products imported from another Member State in which they have been lawfully marketed and hallmarked in accordance with the legislation of that State, where the information provided by that hallmark, in whatever form, is equivalent to that prescribed by the Member State of importation and intelligible to consumers of that State.
32 In order to determine whether an indication in parts per thousand of a standard of fineness not provided for by that legislation provides consumers with equivalent and intelligible information, the Court must take into account, as it has done on several occasions when called upon to consider whether a description, trade mark or promotional description or statement was liable to mislead the purchaser, the presumed expectations of an average consumer who is reasonably well-informed and reasonably observant and circumspect (see inter alia Case C-210/96 Gut Springenheide and Tusky [1998] ECR I-4657, paragraph 31).
69 As the Court held in Robertson, cited above, paragraph 12, and Houtwipper, cited above, paragraph 15, the requirement of a hallmark consistent with the national legislation is not justified where the information provided by a hallmark struck by an independent body in another Member State is equivalent to that prescribed by the Member State of importation and intelligible to consumers of that State.