Stradasfalti Srl v Agenzia delle Entrate - Ufficio di Trento.
Date: 2006-09-14
28. That consultation enables the Commission and the other Member States to control the use by a Member State of the possibility of derogating from the general system of deducting VAT, by checking in particular whether the national measure in question satisfies the condition of adoption for cyclical economic reasons.
29. Article 17(7) of the Sixth Directive thus lays down a procedural obligation which the Member States must observe in order to be able to make use of the derogation it sets out. Consultation of the VAT Committee is clearly a condition precedent to the adoption of any measure on the basis of that provision (see Metropol and Stadler , paragraphs 61 to 63).
44. The procedure provided for by Article 234 EC is an instrument of cooperation between the Court of Justice and national courts, by means of which the Court provides the national courts with the points of interpretation of Community law which they need in order to decide the disputes before them (see, in particular, Case C-380/01 Schneider [2004] ECR I-1389, paragraph 20).
45. In the context of that cooperation, it is solely for the national court, before which the dispute has been brought and which must assume responsibility for the subsequent judicial decision, to determine in the light of the particular circumstances of the case both the need for a preliminary ruling in order to enable it to deliver judgment and the relevance of the questions which it submits to the Court. Consequently, where the questions submitted concern the interpretation of Community law, the Court is, in principle, bound to give a ruling ( Schneider , paragraph 21).
46. Nevertheless, the Court has also held that, in exceptional circumstances, it can examine the conditions in which the case was referred to it by the national court, in order to assess whether it has jurisdiction. The Court may refuse to rule on a question referred for a preliminary ruling by a national court only where it is quite obvious that the interpretation of Community law that is sought bears no relation to the facts of the main action or its purpose, where the problem is hypothetical, or where the Court does not have before it the factual or legal material necessary to give a useful answer to the questions submitted to it ( Schneider , paragraph 22).
47. The spirit of cooperation which must prevail in the preliminary ruling procedure requires the national court to have regard to the function entrusted to the Court of Justice, which is to assist in the administration of justice in the Member States and not to deliver advisory opinions on general or hypothetical questions ( Schneider , paragraph 23).
50. Concerning Question 1(b), which is intended to establish whether Article 17(7) of the Sixth Directive authorises a Member State to exclude goods from the system of deducting VAT without first consulting the VAT Committee, the Court has already held, as stated at paragraph 29 above, that consultation of that committee is a condition precedent to the adoption of any measure on the basis of that provision (see Metropol and Stadler , paragraphs 61 to 63).
54. It follows that the first sentence of Article 17(7) of the Sixth Directive does not authorise a Member State to adopt measures excluding goods from the system of deducting VAT which contain no indication as to their limitation in time and/or which form part of a body of structural adjustment measures whose aim is to reduce the budget deficit and allow State debt to be repaid (see Metropol and Stadler , paragraph 68).
64. As stated in paragraph 46 of this judgment, refusal to give a preliminary ruling on a question submitted by a national court is only possible where it is quite obvious that the interpretation of Community law sought bears no relation to the actual facts of the main action or its purpose, where the problem is hypothetical, or where the Court does not have before it the factual or legal material necessary to give a useful answer to the questions submitted to it ( Schneider , paragraph 22).
66. By virtue of the general duty stated in the third paragraph of Article 189 of the EC Treaty (now the third paragraph of Article 249 EC), Member States are bound to observe all the provisions of the Sixth Directive (see Case C-97/90 Lennartz  [1991] ECR I-3795, paragraph 33). In so far as an exception from the system of deductions has not been established in accordance with Article 17(7) of the Sixth Directive, the national tax authorities may not rely as against a taxable person on a provision derogating from the principle of the right to deduct VAT set out in Article 17(1) of that directive (see Metropol and Stadler , paragraph 64).
67. In the main proceedings, and even though the Italian Government submits that the requests for consultation of the VAT Committee, in 1999 and 2000, preceded the adoption of the national measure extending the derogation from the principle of the right to deduct VAT, it is common ground that that provision, with minor amendments, was systematically renewed from 1980 by the Italian Government. Under those circumstances it cannot be said to be of a temporary nature, nor can it be considered to be based on cyclical economic reasons. That measure must, consequently, be regarded as forming part of a body of structural adjustment measures, which do not come within the scope of application of Article 17(7) of the Sixth Directive. Therefore the Italian Government may not rely on such measures to the detriment of taxable persons (see to that effect Metropol and Stadler , paragraph 65).
68. A taxable person which has been subject to that measure must be able to recalculate its VAT debt in accordance with Article 17(2) of the Sixth Directive, in so far as the goods and services have been used for the purposes of taxable transactions.
72. It should be noted that it is only exceptionally that the Court may, in application of the general principle of legal certainty inherent in the Community legal order, be moved to restrict for any person concerned the opportunity of relying upon a provision which it has interpreted with a view to calling in question legal relationships established in good faith. In determining whether or not to limit the temporal effect of a judgment it is necessary to bear in mind that although the practical consequences of any judicial decision must be weighed carefully, the Court cannot go so far as to diminish the objectivity of the law and compromise its future application on the ground of the possible repercussions which might result, as regards the past, from a judicial decision (Case 24/86 Blaizot  [1988] ECR 379, paragraphs 28 and 30, and Case C-163/90 Legros and Others  [1992] ECR I-4625, paragraph 30).