Дело C-153/94: Faroe Seafood и Føroya Fiskasøla, Заключение от 9 ноември 1995 г.

1. (a) Where the competent authorities of a Member State claim post-clearance recovery of customs duties on imports pursuant to Council Regulation 1697/79 on the ground that the goods did not originate in the jurisdiction specified in the relevant EUR.1 certificate, is it for national law or for Community law to prescribe the rules determining — the party bearing the burden of proving that the goods did not originate there; and — the standard of proof applicable in the matter

(b) If it is for Community law to prescribe those rules, what are those rules

2. On the proper interpretation of Council Regulation 2051/74, Commission Regulation 3184/74 and Council Regulation 1697/79, may the competent authorities of a Member State levy post-clearance customs duties on consignments imported from the Faroe Islands, where — those authorities did not levy customs duty at the time of importation in reliance on EUR.1 certificates declaring the consignments to be of Faroese origin; — those EUR.1 certificates were issued in good faith by the competent Faroese authorities; — a mission of enquiry comprising officials of the Commission accompanied by a Danish and a British official reported that the consignments in question did not meet the rules of origin because the factories supplying the consignments in question had processed originating and non-originating materials without segregating those materials and because documentation relating to the status of the raw materials used was not attached to the related application forms; — the mission concluded that “these certificates EUR.1... are wholly or partially cancelled”; — the Faroese authorities do not accept the conclusions of the mission of enquiry and maintain that the certificates are in force; — there has been no reference to the Committee on Origin of the issues in the mission report disputed by the Faroese authorities; — pursuant to the mission's report, there has been a reference to the Committee on Origin of other issues arising from the mission of enquiry

3. (a) Are the conditions which define Faroe Island vessels in Annex IV of Council Regulation 2051/74 and Explanatory Note 4 of Commission Regulation 3184/74 to be read conjunctively or disjunctively

(b) If those conditions are to be read conjunctively, does the word “crew” when used in those contexts include persons not forming part of the normal complement of the vessel who are engaged on a particular voyage or part of a voyage, pursuant to a joint venture agreement with an undertaking in a third country, to work on the vessel as trainees or as unskilled hands working below decks, paid either by the operator of the vessel or by the undertaking in the third country

(c) Where a fish-processing factory fails to separate raw materials according to their several origins as defined by Regulation 3184/74, may the customs authorities in a Member State levy duty on imports derived from that factory in an amount equal to the duty that would have been payable if the origins of the goods in each consignment had been proportionally correspondent to the origins of the raw materials imported into the factory in the year in which the import occurred

4. (a) Where the authorities of a Member State issue a single post-clearance demand note for a global sum and part of the sum so demanded is irrecoverable pursuant to Article 2(1) of Regulation 1697/79, is it for national law or for Community law to determine whether the demand note must be considered to be void in its entirety

(b) If that matter is governed by Community law, under what circumstances (if any) must the demand note be considered as void in its entirety

5. On the proper construction of Article 5(2) of Council Regulation 1697/79 and Article 4 of Commission Regulation 2164/91, are the competent authorities of a Member State free to proceed to post-clearance recovery of import duties which were not collected on the importation of goods, without first referring the matter to the Commission, where: — the exporter, acting in good faith, declared the goods to be of Faroese origin; — save in so far as the previous indent might be held to indicate otherwise, the exporter observed all the provisions in force concerning the customs declaration; — the competent authorities of the jurisdiction from which the goods were exported, acting in good faith, certified on movement certificates “EUR.1” that the goods originated there and continued at all material times to maintain those movement certificates in force; — the competent authorities of the Member State to which the goods were imported, acting in good faith, originally accepted that the origin of the goods was as declared in the movement certificates; — the persons liable for payment at all times believed in good faith that the origin of the goods was as declared in the movement certificates; — the competent authorities of the Member State of importation do not claim to have considered the claim to waiver of customs duty before issuing demands for post-clearance recovery of duty; — those competent authorities decided not to refer the matter to the Commission because they did not consider that the conditions for waiver of duties under Article 5(2) were satisfied inasmuch as the competent authorities considered that it is the importer or the agent which runs the risk of the EUR.1 certificate being found to have been wrongly issued and the competent authorities considered that an importer wholly owned by an exporter, and the agent for such an exporter, ought to be able to establish the origin of the goods in question?