SGI and Valériane SNC v Ministre de l'Action et des Comptes publics.
Date: 2018-06-27
26


In that regard, it must be noted that the Court has found requests for preliminary rulings to be admissible in cases in which, although the facts of the main proceedings were outside the direct scope of EU law, the provisions of EU law had been made applicable by national legislation, which, in dealing with situations that do not fall within the scope of EU law, had followed the same approach as that provided for by EU law (see, to that effect, judgment of 22 March 2018, Jacob and Lassus, C‑327/16 and C‑421/16, EU:C:2018:210, paragraph 33 and the case-law cited).
27


In those circumstances, it is clearly in the interest of the European Union that, in order to forestall future differences of interpretation, provisions or concepts taken from EU law should be interpreted uniformly, irrespective of the circumstances in which they are to apply (see judgment of 22 March 2018, Jacob and Lassus, C‑327/16 and C‑421/16, EU:C:2018:210, paragraph 34).
28


In the present case, it is apparent from the documents before the Court that Article 17 of the Sixth Directive had also been made directly and unconditionally applicable by French law to the French overseas department at issue in the main proceedings. Therefore, it is clearly in the interest of the European Union that an answer be given to the question referred.
36


Conversely, when there is no actual delivery of the goods or performance of the services, no right to deduct may arise.
38


The good or bad faith of a taxable person seeking deduction of VAT has no bearing on the question whether there has been a delivery, for the purposes of Article 10(2) of the Sixth Directive. In accordance with the objective of that directive, which aims to establish a common system of VAT based, inter alia, on a uniform definition of taxable transactions, the concept of ‘supply of goods’ in Article 5(1) of that directive is objective in nature and must be interpreted without regard to the purpose or results of the transactions concerned and without it being necessary for the tax authorities to carry out inquiries to determine the intention of the taxable person or for them to take account of the intention of an economic operator other than that taxable person involved in the same chain of supply (see, to that effect, judgment of 21 November 2013, Dixons Retail, C‑494/12, EU:C:2013:758, paragraphs 19 and 21 and the case-law cited).
39


In that regard, it must be remembered that it is for the person seeking deduction of VAT to establish that he meets the conditions for eligibility (judgment of 26 September 1996, Enkler, C‑230/94, EU:C:1996:352, paragraph 24).
42


First of all, the principle of legal certainty requires that rules of law be clear and precise and predictable in their effect, so that interested parties can ascertain their position in situations and legal relationships governed by EU law (judgment of 31 January 2013, LVK, C‑643/11, EU:C:2013:55, paragraph 51).
44


Next, the principle of fiscal neutrality, which reflects the principle of equal treatment, requires that economic operators that carry out the same transactions not be treated differently for the purposes of VAT unless differentiation is objectively justified (see, to that effect, judgment of 31 January 2013, LVK, C‑643/11, EU:C:2013:55, paragraph 55). A taxable person who is denied the right to deduct because of the absence of taxable transactions is not in a comparable situation to a taxable person who has been granted the right to deduct because of the existence of an actual taxable transaction.