Keywords
Summary

Keywords

Tax provisions — Internal taxation — Charge on the registration of new motor vehicles where there is no similar or competing domestic production — Examination in the light of Article 90 EC — Conditions — Compliance with that provision — Assessment of the charge on the basis of Article 28 EC et seq. — Excluded where there are no figures to show the free movement of goods is impeded — (Arts 28 EC and 90 EC)

Summary

Since it is part of a general system of internal dues applied systematically to categories of vehicles in accordance with objective criteria, irrespective of the origin of the products, a charge on the registration of new motor vehicles established by a Member State which does not have any domestic production of vehicles constitutes internal taxation whose compatibility with Community law must be examined in the light of Article 90 EC. That provision must be interpreted as not precluding such a charge where there is no domestic production of cars nor of any products liable to compete with cars in the Member State concerned.

Although, moreover, it is true that it is not permissible for the Member States to impose on products which thus escape the application of the prohibitions contained in Article 90 EC charges of such an amount that the free movement of goods within the common market would be impeded as far as those goods were concerned, it cannot be considered that that charge has ceased to be internal taxation and should be classified as a measure having equivalent effect to a quantitative restriction, for the purposes of Article 28 EC, where the figures as to the number of new vehicles registered in the Member State concerned, and thus imported into that Member State, do not in any way show that the free movement of that type of goods between that Member State and the other Member States is impeded.

see paras 35, 39-43, operative part