Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1 Community law - Concepts - Interpretation - Reference to national law - Not permissible

2 Community law - Interpretation - Multilingual texts - Uniform interpretation - Whether different language versions to be taken into account

3 Tax provisions - Harmonisation of laws - Excise duty - Directive 92/12 - Products subject to excise duty - Determination of the Member State in which excise duty is chargeable - Products acquired by individuals for their own use and transported by them - Concept - Purchase of goods through an agent - Excluded - Duty chargeable in the Member State of destination

(Council Directive 92/12, Art. 8)

Summary

4 The Community legal order does not, in principle, aim to define concepts on the basis of one or more national legal systems unless there is express provision to that effect.

5 The need for a uniform interpretation of measures adopted by the Community institutions makes it impossible for the text of a provision to be considered in isolation but requires, on the contrary, that it should be interpreted and applied in the light of the versions existing in the other official languages. All the language versions must, in principle, be recognised as having the same weight and this cannot vary according to the size of the population of the Member States using the language in question.

6 Directive 92/12 on the general arrangements for products subject to excise duty and on the holding, movement and monitoring of such products must be interpreted as not precluding the levying of excise duty in Member State A on goods released for consumption in Member State B, where the goods were acquired from a company, X, for the use of private individuals in Member State A, through a company, Y, acting in return for payment as agent for those individuals, and where transportation of the goods from Member State B to Member State A was also arranged by company Y on behalf of those individuals and effected by a professional carrier charging for his services.

Article 8 of the Directive, which provides that, as regards products acquired by private individuals for their own use and transported by them, excise duty is to be charged in the Member State in which they are acquired, is not applicable where the purchase and/or transportation of goods subject to duty is effected through an agent. In a case where goods from one Member State are carried to another Member State on the instructions of a trader acting in return for payment who has previously solicited customers in that latter State and has arranged for importation of the goods, excise duty is chargeable in that latter Member State.