Keywords
Summary

Keywords

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1. Preliminary rulings ° Jurisdiction of the Court ° Limits ° Request for interpretation not concerned with a hypothetical problem ° Obligation to give a ruling

(EC Treaty, Art. 177)

2. Transport ° Carriage of goods ° Facilitating passage across frontiers ° Directive 83/643 ° Scope ° Intra-Community transport ° Trade with non-member countries ° Excluded

(Council Directive 83/643, Arts 1(1) and 5(1)(a))

3. Free movement of goods ° Trade with non-member countries ° Customs duties ° Charges having equivalent effect ° Unilateral introduction by Member States ° Not permissible ° Power reserved exclusively to the Community

(EC Treaty, Arts 9 and 113)

4. Free movement of goods ° Trade with non-member countries ° Prohibition, laid down in agreements concluded by the Community or in Community regulations on agriculture, of charges having equivalent effect ° Scope same as in the case of intra-Community trade

(EC Treaty, Art. 9)

Summary

1. By virtue of the cooperation between the Court of Justice and the national courts provided for by Article 177 of the Treaty, it is solely for the national court before which the dispute has been brought, and which must assume responsibility for the subsequent judicial decision, to determine in the light of the particular circumstances of each case both the need for a preliminary ruling in order to enable it to deliver judgment and the relevance of the questions which it submits to the Court. Consequently, where the questions submitted by the national court concern the interpretation of a provision of Community law, the Court of Justice is, in principle, bound to give a ruling.

The position would be different if the Court were called on to give a ruling on a problem of a hypothetical nature, but that is not the case where, although the national court does not give an exhaustive account of the factual and legal context in which the questions were raised, the Court of Justice has sufficient information at its disposal regarding the circumstances with which the main proceedings are concerned to enable it to interpret the rules of Community law and to give a helpful answer to the questions submitted.

2. By virtue of Article 1(1) of Directive 83/643 on the facilitation of physical inspections and administrative formalities in respect of the carriage of goods between Member States, as amended by Directive 87/53, and without prejudice to the application of special Community provisions in force governing trade with certain non-member countries, that directive, in particular the second indent of Article 5(1)(a) fixing the normal business hours of customs offices, applies only to the carriage of goods between Member States and not to trade with non-member countries, in particular members of EFTA.

3. Both the unicity of the Community customs territory and the uniformity of the common commercial policy would be seriously undermined if the Member States were authorized, merely by adopting national legislation, to impose charges having equivalent effect to customs duties on trade with non-member countries. It is the responsibility of the Community alone, in order to ensure that taxation has a uniform impact in all the Member States on trade with non-member countries, to determine and, if necessary, change the level of duties and taxes payable on products from those countries.

4. If the prohibition of charges having an effect equivalent to customs duties is contained in bilateral or multilateral agreements concluded by the Community with one or more non-member countries with a view to eliminating obstacles to trade and in the Council regulations providing for common organization of the markets in various agricultural products regarding trade with non-member countries, the scope of that prohibition is the same as in the case of intra-Community trade. Those agreements, and a fortiori the agricultural regulations, would be deprived of much of their effectiveness if the term "charge having equivalent effect" contained in them were to be interpreted as having a more limited scope than the same term appearing in the Treaty.