Photo frost decision
The Photo Frost decision of the European Court of Justice is an important decision on the question of the preliminary ruling by the ECJ.
facts
The company Foto-Frost, based in Ammersbek, imported prism binoculars from the GDR via middlemen in Denmark and the United Kingdom using the so-called external joint shipping system . The main customs office responsible initially did not levy any customs duties on these imports. After a later examination procedure, the Federal Republic of Germany asked the European Commission whether the subsequent collection of customs duties could be dispensed with, since the original decision was based on an error by the authorities; Until then, it had been the constant practice of the German main customs offices not to levy any customs duties on goods originating in the GDR. With the decision of May 6, 1983, the European Commission denied this and demanded that the due customs duties be collected.
Foto-Frost appealed to the Hamburg Finance Court against the customs change notice that was subsequently issued . The court found the European Commission's decision to be unlawful and referred to the European Court of Justice as to whether the national courts have the power to invalidate decisions of the European Commission.
Meaning of the judgment
With the Foto-Frost decision, the ECJ justified its monopoly on rejection of Union acts.
The European Court of Justice initially stated that, according to Article 177 of the EEC Treaty, a submission obligation to the European Court of Justice only exists for courts of last instance. The purpose of this regulation is to apply Community law uniformly throughout the European Economic Community. It would run counter to this purpose if national courts, not of final instance, were authorized to declare acts of the Community institutions to be invalid, as this would ultimately lead to a fragmentation of Community law.
The determination of the invalidity of an act of a Community organ corresponds, mutatis mutandis, to an action for annulment under Article 173 of the EEC Treaty, for which the European Court of Justice has exclusive jurisdiction. In an analogous application, national courts are therefore obliged to refer proceedings to the European Court of Justice if they question the legality of an act of a Community body.
In the matter itself, however, the European Court of Justice agreed with the assessment of the Hamburg Finance Court and declared the decision of the European Commission to be invalid, as there is a clear case of an error which, under Community law, allows a subsequent recovery to be dispensed with.
literature
- Matthias Pechstein: Decisions of the ECJ: Annotated study selection . UTB, 2016, ISBN 978-3-8252-4604-4 , pp. 225-228 .
- Jan Bergmann : Preliminary ruling procedure after the EU Reform Treaty of Lisbon . ZAR 2011, 41
- Bertrand Wägenbaur: Stumbling blocks in the preliminary ruling procedure . EuZW 2000, 37
Web links
- Judgment of the Court of 22 October 1987: Foto-Frost v Hauptzollamt Lübeck-Ost. Case 314/85. eur-lex.europa.eu
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael Ahlt, Daniel Dittert: Europarecht ( Memento of the original of April 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 4th edition, Munich 2011, p. 141 3b
