Teodor Ispas and Anduţa Ispas v Direcţia Generală a Finanţelor Publice Cluj.
Date: 2017-11-09
21


In that regard, it should be borne in mind that, according to settled case-law of the Court, questions on the interpretation of EU law referred by a national court in the factual and legislative context which that court is responsible for defining and the accuracy of which is not a matter for the Court to determine enjoy a presumption of relevance. The Court may refuse to rule on a question referred for a preliminary ruling from a national court only where it is quite obvious that the interpretation of EU law that is 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 (judgment of 16 July 2015, Sommer Antriebs- und Funktechnik, C‑369/14, EU:C:2015:491, paragraph 32 and the case-law cited).
22


The need to provide an interpretation of EU law which will be of use to the national court requires, as made clear by Article 94 of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, that the national court define the factual and legal context of its questions or, at the very least, that it explain the factual circumstances on which those questions are based (judgments of 11 March 2010, Attanasio Group, C-384/08, EU:C:2010:133, paragraph 32, and of 5 December 2013, Zentralbetriebsrat der gemeinnützigen Salzburger Landeskliniken, C‑514/12, EU:C:2013:799, paragraph 17).
26


In order to answer that question, it should be recalled that respect for the rights of the defence is a general principle of EU law which is to be applied where the authorities are minded to adopt in respect of a person a measure that will adversely affect him. In accordance with that principle, the addressees of decisions that significantly affect their interests must be placed in a position in which they can effectively make known their views as regards the information on which the authorities intend to base their decision. The authorities of the Member States are subject to that obligation when they take decisions which come within the scope of EU law, even if the EU legislation applicable does not expressly provide for such a procedural requirement (judgment of 17 December 2015, WebMindLicenses, C‑419/14, EU:C:2015:832, paragraph 84 and the case-law cited).
27


That general principle applies in circumstances such as those at issue in the main proceedings in which a Member State, in order to comply with the obligation arising from the application of EU law to take all legislative and administrative measures appropriate for ensuring collection of all the VAT due on its territory and for preventing fraud (see, to that effect, judgment of 26 February 2013, Åkerberg Fransson, C‑617/10, EU:C:2013:105, paragraph 25), submits taxpayers to a tax inspection procedure.
29


Failing any relevant EU rules governing the matter, the detailed procedural rules designed to ensure the protection of the rights which taxpayers acquire under EU law are a matter for the domestic legal order of each Member State, in accordance with the principle of the procedural autonomy of the Member States, provided, however, that they are not less favourable than those governing similar domestic situations (principle of equivalence) and that they do not render impossible in practice or excessively difficult the exercise of rights conferred by the European Union legal order (principle of effectiveness) (judgment of 8 March 2017, Euro Park Service, C‑14/16, EU:C:2017:177, paragraph 36).
31


With regard to the principle of effectiveness, it should be noted that the requirement, recalled in paragraph 26 of this judgment, for a person to be able to make his views known as regards the information on which the authorities intend to base their decision means that the addressees of that decision must be in a position to be aware of that information.
32


To that end, as the Advocate General observed in points 121 and 122 of his Opinion, national tax authorities are not under a general obligation to provide full access to the file or to communicate of their own motion the documents and information that support the intended decision.
35


Indeed, according to settled case-law of the Court, the general principle of EU law of respect for the rights of the defence is not an unfettered prerogative but may be restricted, provided that the restrictions in fact correspond to objectives of public interest pursued by the measure in question and do not constitute, in the light of the objectives pursued, a disproportionate and intolerable interference which impairs the very substance of the rights guaranteed (judgments of 26 September 2013, Texdata Software, C‑418/11, EU:C:2013:588, paragraph 84, and of 3 July 2014, Kamino International Logistics and Datema Hellmann Worldwide Logistics, C‑129/13 and C‑130/13, EU:C:2014:2041, paragraph 42).
36


In that regard, in a procedure of tax inspection and establishment of the basis for VAT assessment, such restrictions, enshrined in national law, may, in particular, be designed to protect requirements of confidentiality or professional secrecy, which are liable to be infringed by access to certain information and certain documents.
39


In the light of the foregoing, the answer to the question referred is that the general principle of EU law of respect for the rights of the defence must be interpreted as a requirement that, in national administrative procedures of inspection and establishment of the basis for VAT assessment, an individual is to have the opportunity to have communicated to him, at his request, the information and documents in the administrative file and considered by the public authority when it adopted its decision, unless objectives of public interest warrant restricting access to that information and those documents.