Pelati d.o.o. v Republika Slovenija.
Date: 2012-10-18
18. According to the Court’s case-law, where, in regulating purely internal situations, national legislation adopts the same solutions as those adopted in European Union law in order, in particular, to avoid discrimination against its own nationals or any distortion of competition, it is clearly in the European Union’s interest that, in order to forestall future differences of interpretation, provisions or concepts taken from European Union law should be interpreted uniformly, irrespective of the circumstances in which they are to apply (see Case C-28/95 Leur-Bloem  [1997] ECR I-4161, paragraph 32; Case C-43/00 Andersen og Jensen  [2002] ECR I-379, paragraph 18; and Case C-352/08 Modehuis A. Zwijnenburg  [2010] ECR I-4303, paragraph 33).
19. It may be added that it is for the national court alone to assess the precise scope of that reference to European Union law, the jurisdiction of the Court being confined to considering provisions of European Union law only (see Leur-Bloem , paragraph 33, and Modehuis A. Zwijnenburg , paragraph 34).
23. In accordance with settled case-law of the Court, in the absence of relevant European Union rules, the detailed procedural rules designed to ensure the protection of the rights which individuals acquire under European Union 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 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) (see, inter alia, Joined Cases C-392/04 and C-422/04 i-21 Germany and Arcor  [2006] ECR I-8559, paragraph 57, and Case C-262/09 Meilicke and Others  [2011] ECR I-5669, paragraph 55).
26. With respect to the rights conferred by Directive 90/434, it must be recalled that the common system of taxation laid down by that directive, which comprehends various tax advantages, applies without distinction to all mergers, divisions, transfers of assets and exchanges of shares, irrespective of the reasons, whether financial, economic or simply fiscal, for those operations (see Leur-Bloem , paragraph 36, and Modehuis A. Zwijnenburg , paragraph 41).
27. It is only by way of exception and in specific cases that the Member States may, pursuant to Article 11(1)(a) of Directive 90/434, refuse to apply or withdraw the benefit of all or any part of the provisions of that directive (Case C-321/05 Kofoed  [2007] ECR I-5795, paragraph 37, and Modehuis A. Zwijnenburg , paragraph 45), namely when the restructuring envisaged has as its principal objective or as one of its principal objectives tax evasion or tax avoidance.
30. As regards the length of the period, the Court has previously held, in the context of analysing the principle of effective judicial protection of the rights conferred on individuals by European Union law, that it is compatible with that law to lay down reasonable time-limits for bringing proceedings in the interests of legal certainty which protects both the taxpayer and the administration concerned. Such time-limits do not make it impossible in practice or excessively difficult to exercise the rights conferred by the European Union legal order (Case C-261/95 Palmisani  [1997] ECR I-4025, paragraph 28, and Case C-228/96 Aprile  [1998] ECR I-7141, paragraph 19). In this connection, the Court has also held that a period of 60 days for bringing proceedings is not objectionable in itself (Case C-312/93 Peterbroeck  [1995] ECR I-4599, paragraph 16, and Case C-40/08 Asturcom Telecomunicaciones  [2009] ECR I-9579, paragraph 43).
36. It should be recalled that the objectives pursued by Directive 90/434 must be achieved in national law in compliance with the requirements of legal certainty. To that end, the Member States have an obligation to establish a system of time-limits that is sufficiently precise, clear and foreseeable to enable individuals to ascertain their rights and obligations (see, by analogy, Case C-406/08 Uniplex (UK)  [2010] ECR I-817, paragraph 39 and the case-law cited). It is for the national court to establish whether those requirements are complied with.