92000E1700

WRITTEN QUESTION E-1700/00

by Jonas Sjöstedt (GUE/NGL) to the Commission

(29 May 2000)

Subject: National taxes and levies on imported cars

Can the Swedish Government impose an equally high sales tax on an imported used car as on a new Swedish car? The same question applies to the imposition of environmental and scrapping levies. Can the Swedish Government impose an equally high levy on an imported car as on a new Swedish car?

Answer given by Mr Bolkestein on behalf of the Commission

(18 July 2000)

The Court of Justice has ruled that if a Member State charges tax on vehicles from other Member States based on a value generally higher than their real value, while similar domestic vehicles are taxed on their

real value, that constitutes discrimination within the meaning of Article 90 (formerly Article 95) of the EC Treaty. In practice, the extra tax to which this ruling relates generally applies to second-hand cars, while new vehicles are usually taxed according to their real value.

The Court's judgments make it clear that the rulings in question apply to taxes levied on the value of the vehicle(1). The charge imposed on vehicles in Sweden, on the other hand to which the Honourable Member implicitly refers is not a tax on value but a flat-rate fee of SEK 700 ( 84,43), irrespective of the value of the vehicle, which is intended to cover in advance the cost of scrapping the vehicle (when its useful life is over and it is ultimately taken off the market). All Swedish-registered vehicles are subject to this scrapping fee when they are first put on the road there, whether they are new or second-hand. The fee is linked to that Member State's environmental policy, which is intended to ensure that vehicles are not dumped off-road when their useful life is over but scrapped in accordance with environmental regulations by approved operators. For this purpose, the Swedish administration offers a form of partial refund of the fee (SEK 500) if the vehicle is scrapped by an approved operator.

In these circumstances, the Commission considers that the relevant fee charged by the Swedish administration when a vehicle is first put on the road in Sweden is not incompatible with Community law.

Apart from that tax and VAT, the Commission is not aware of any other taxes applied to the sale or first registration of vehicles in Sweden.

(1) In particular the Court's judgments of 11 December 1990 in Case C-47/88 Commission v. Denmark, [1990] ECR I-4509; 9 March 1995 in Case C-345/93 Fazenda Pública and Ministério Público v. Américo João Nunes Tadeu, [1993] ECR I-479 and 23 October 1997 in Case C-375/95 Commission v. Greece, [1997] ECR I-5981.