Author Archives: Maria

C-82/12 Transportes Jordi Besora SL v Generalitat de Catalunya – Limitation of the temporal effects of a judgment?

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In this preliminary reference case, the question was whether a Spanish tax on retail sales of certain hydrocarbons (“Impuesto sobre las Ventas Minoristas de Deteminados Hidrocarburos” or the “IVMDH”) was in compliance with Article 3(2) of Directive 92/12.

Readers interested in the facts and the tax aspects of this case may have a look at the press release by the Court here. For those not interested, the CoJ found, in a nutshell, that a tax on the retail sale of mineral oils such as the IVMDH is not in compliance with Article 3(2) of the Directive as it cannot be regarded as pursuing a specific purpose, i.e. it is not itself directed at protecting health and the environment.

We consider more interesting the second part of the CoJ judgment regarding the possibility and the conditions for limiting its temporal effects. Continue reading →

Cases C-89/08 P and C-272/12 P Commission v Ireland and Others: The EU law principles in the Eurallumina saga – Part 2

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For an introduction and the facts of these case, pls have a look at Part 1.

The second time round, the General Court again annulled the contested Commission decision as infringing the principles of sound administration, legal certainty and the presumption of legality attaching to European Union measures. It also found that, in view of the Council authorisations, the exemptions could not be attributed to the Member States themselves and, thus, the Commission erred in classifying them as State aid within the meaning of Article 87(1) EC (see General Court’s judgment here).

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Cases C-89/08 P and C-272/12 P Commission v Ireland and Others: The EU law principles in the Eurallumina saga – Part 1

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In the following posts we are going to have a look at the saga of the Eurallumina cases, and in particular the judgments of the Court of Justice in Case C-89/08 P of 2 December 2009 and Case C-272/12 P of 10 December 2013 Commission v Ireland and Others. These judgments touch upon important principles of EU law such as legal certainty, the duty to state reasons, the ability of the EU Courts to raise pleas sua sponte, the right of the parties to be heard, the protection of legitimate expectations and the presumption of legality of EU measures as well interesting issues such as the relationship between tax harmonisation and monitoring of State aid and the separation of powers between the Council and the Commission.

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