Döhler Neuenkirchen GmbH v Hauptzollamt Oldenburg.
Date: 2012-09-06
29. First, it must be pointed out that neither the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union nor its Rules of Procedure make provision for the parties to submit observations in response to the Advocate General’s Opinion (order in Case C-17/98 Emesa Sugar  [2000] ECR I-665, paragraph 2).
30. As regards the reopening of the oral procedure, it must be pointed out that the Court may, of its own motion, on a proposal from the Advocate General or at the request of the parties, order the reopening of the oral procedure under Article 61 of its Rules of Procedure if it considers that it lacks sufficient information or that the case must be dealt with on the basis of an argument which has not been debated between the parties (see Case C-205/06 Commission v Austria  [2009] ECR I-1301, paragraph 13).
35. Under Article 204(1)(a) of the Customs Code, a customs debt on importation is incurred through non-fulfilment of one of the obligations arising, in respect of goods liable to import duties, from the use of the customs procedure under which they are placed, unless it is established that the failure has no significant effect on the correct operation of the procedure in question. It must be noted that, as the Advocate General points out in point 49 of his Opinion, any circumstance not covered by this exception falls within the sphere of application of Article 204 of the Customs Code.
38. No provision of the Customs Code or its Implementing Regulation, in the versions in force at the relevant time, supports the notion that it is necessary, as regards the effect of a failure on the incurrence of a customs debt, pursuant to Article 204 of the Customs Code, to distinguish between an obligation which must be carried out before the discharge of the relevant customs procedure and an obligation which must be carried out after such discharge, or between a ‘principal’ and ‘secondary’ obligation.
40. It must be observed that the inward processing procedure in the form of a system of suspension constitutes an exceptional measure intended to facilitate the carrying-out of certain economic activities. That procedure involves the presence, on the customs territory of the European Union, of non-Community goods, which carries the risk that those goods will end up forming part of the economic networks of the Member States without having been cleared through customs (see Case C-234/09 DSV Road [2010] ECR I-7333, paragraph 31).
41. Since that procedure involves obvious risks to the correct application of the customs legislation of the European Union and the resulting collection of duties, the beneficiaries of that procedure are required to comply strictly with the obligations resulting therefrom. Similarly, the consequences of non-compliance with their obligations must be strictly interpreted (see Joined Cases C-430/08 and C-431/08 Terex Equipment and Others  [2010] ECR I-321, paragraph 42).
44. Moreover, the Court has held that Article 859 of the Implementing Regulation contains a validly constituted and exhaustive set of rules on failures, within the meaning of Article 204(1)(a) of the Customs Code, which ‘have no significant effect on the correct operation of the temporary storage or customs procedure in question’ (Case C-48/98 Söhl & Söhlke  [1999] ECR I-7877, paragraph 43). In the main proceedings, the referring court formulated the question referred on the assumption that the conditions set out in Article 859 were not fulfilled.
48. In the light of the above, the answer to the question referred is that Article 204(1)(a) of the Customs Code must be interpreted as meaning that the non-fulfilment of the obligation to submit the bill of discharge to the supervising office within 30 days of the expiry of the period for discharging the relevant procedure laid down in the first indent of the first subparagraph of Article 521(1) of the Implementing Regulation gives rise to a customs debt in respect of the entire quantity of the imported goods covered by the bill of discharge, including those re-exported outside the territory of the European Union, where the conditions set out in Article 859(9) of the Implementing Regulation are not considered to be fulfilled.
Costs