Mariana Irimie v Administraţia Finanţelor Publice Sibiu and Administraţia Fondului pentru Mediu.
Date: 2013-04-18
18. It should be noted at the outset that the Court of Justice has already held that European Union law precludes a tax, such as that imposed by OUG No 50/2008 in the version applicable to the facts in the main proceedings, which has the effect of discouraging the import and placing in circulation in Romania of second-hand vehicles purchased in other Member States ( Tatu , paragraphs 58 and 61).
19. It should be pointed out, as the Advocate General did at paragraph 19 of his Opinion, that it is not for the Court of Justice to assign a legal classification to the action brought by the applicant in the main proceedings. In the present case, it is for the applicant to specify the nature and basis of her action, subject to the supervision of the referring court (see, by analogy, Case C-524/04 Test Claimants in the Thin Cap Group Litigation  [2007] ECR I-2107, paragraph 109 and the case-law cited).
20. It is apparent from settled case-law that the right to a refund of taxes levied in a Member State in breach of the rules of European Union law is the consequence and complement of the rights conferred on individuals by provisions of European Union law prohibiting such taxes. The Member State is therefore required in principle to repay taxes levied in breach of European Union law (Case C-398/09 Lady & Kid and Others  [2011] ECR I-0000, paragraph 17, and Case C‑591/10 Littlewoods Retail and Others  [2012] ECR I-0000, paragraph 24).
21. Furthermore, it should be noted that, where a Member State has levied taxes in breach of the rules of European Union law, individuals are entitled to reimbursement not only of the tax unduly levied but also of the amounts paid to that State or retained by it which relate directly to that tax. That also includes losses constituted by the unavailability of sums of money as a result of a tax being levied prematurely (see Joined Cases C-397/98 and C-410/98 Metallgesellschaft and Others  [2001] ECR I-1727, paragraphs 87 to 89; Case C-446/04 Test Claimants in the FII Group Litigation [2006] ECR I-11753, paragraph 205; Littlewoods Retail and Others , paragraph 25, and Joined Cases C-113/10, C-147/10 and C-234/10 Zuckerfabrik Jülich and Others  [2012] ECR I-0000, paragraph 65).
22. Accordingly, the principle of the obligation of Member States to repay with interest amounts of tax levied in breach of European Union law follows from that law ( Littlewoods Retail and Others , paragraph 26, and Zuckerfabrik Jülich and Others , paragraph 66).
23. In this respect, the Court has already held that, in the absence of European Union legislation, it is for the internal legal order of each Member State to lay down the conditions in which such interest must be paid, particularly the rate of that interest and its method of calculation. Those conditions must comply with the principles of equivalence and effectiveness; that is to say that they must not be less favourable than those concerning similar claims based on provisions of national law or arranged in such a way as to render the exercise of rights conferred by the European Union legal order impossible in practice or excessively difficult (see, to that effect, Littlewoods Retail and Others , paragraphs 27 and 28 and the case-law cited).
26. As regards the principle of effectiveness, that principle requires, in a situation of repayment of a tax levied by a Member State in breach of European Union law, that the national rules referring in particular to the calculation of interest which may be due should not lead to depriving the taxpayer of adequate compensation for the loss sustained through the undue payment of the tax (see Littlewoods Retail and Others , paragraph 29).
27. In this case, it must be found that a system such as that at issue in the main proceedings, which limits interest to that accruing from the day following the date of the claim for repayment of the tax unduly levied, does not meet that requirement.
28. That loss depends, inter alia, on the duration of the unavailability of the sum unduly levied in breach of European Union law and thus occurs, in principle, during the period between the date of the undue payment of the tax at issue and the date of repayment thereof.