KG in Firma OSPIG Textil-Gesellschaft W. Ahlers GmbH & Co. v Hauptzollamt Bremen-Freihafen.
Date: 1994-05-19
9 On the other hand, according to the national court, the inclusion of the quota charges in the value for customs purposes where trade in quotas is not officially sanctioned may be justified on the ground that it is difficult to establish that the alleged quota charges were in fact incurred in the acquisition of third-party quotas rather than representing commission paid to intermediaries in the course of an export transaction, which must be added to the customs value under Article 8(1)(a) of Regulation No 1224/80. The national court asks whether the Court, by affirming in its judgment in Case C-219/88 Malt v Hauptzollamt Duesseldorf [1990] ECR I-1481 that certificates of authenticity for beef and veal, contrary to the case with regard to the system of quotas applicable to textiles, could not lawfully be traded, did not restrict its decision not to include quota charges in the customs value to export licences which are the subject of lawful trade.
12 As the Court held in Ospig, cited above, it follows from the combined provisions of paragraphs (1) and (3)(a) of Article 3 of Regulation No 1224/80, as amended, that the value for customs purposes includes all sums paid or payable as a condition of the sale of the goods imported by the purchaser to the vendor or by the purchaser to a third party in order to fulfil one of the vendor' s obligations (paragraph 11).
13 It may also be noted that Article 8 of Regulation No 1224/80, to which Article 3(1) refers, provides that "there shall be added to the price actually paid or payable for the imported goods" a number of charges ancillary to that price, from an economic point of view. Article 8 provides an exhaustive list of the charges which may thus be taken into account for the determination of the value for customs purposes and it should be noted that the "quota charges" do not appear in that list (paragraph 12 of the Ospig judgment).
14 The Court also held in that judgment that the Community rules, which seek to control the quantities of textile products imported from certain non-member countries, pursue an entirely different objective from that of Regulation No 1224/80, the purpose of which is to establish a fair, uniform and neutral system of customs valuation of goods for the application of the Common Customs Tariff. The latter regulation must therefore be interpreted without reference to the rules on the system of export and import licences (paragraph 14 of the Ospig judgment). On the basis of the foregoing, the Court decided that under the rules in question the quota charges incurred in connection with the acquisition of export quotas could not be taken into account for the calculation under Regulation No 1224/80 of the value of the goods for customs purposes.
17 In the abovementioned judgment in Malt, the Court admittedly held that the amounts paid to the seller, in addition to the price of the goods, for the certificates of authenticity needed for the duty-free importation under a Community tariff quota for beef and veal had to be regarded as an integral part of the value for customs purposes and affirmed in that regard that contrary to what happened under the system for quotas applicable to textiles, certificates of authenticity could not lawfully be traded separate from the goods to which they related (paragraphs 14 and 15 of the judgment in Malt). That remark, however, was made by the Court only in order to stress the difference between the certificates of authenticity required for the importation of beef and veal and the export licences issued for textiles, inasmuch as the latter were not connected with a specific contract of sale but with a specific class of goods and could be sold independently of the goods, in which case the price payable represented consideration for the right to export which was independent of the price payable for the goods (paragraph 13).