Council Directive 92/12/EEC of 25 February 1992 on the general arrangements for products subject to excise duty and on the holding, movement and monitoring of such products read in the light of the general principles of EU law, in particular the principles of legal certainty and proportionality, must be interpreted as precluding national legislation — such as that at issue in the main proceedings, which permits, inter alia, the owners of products moving under excise duty suspension arrangements to be declared jointly and severally liable for payment of sums corresponding to the financial penalties imposed in the event of the commission of an offence during the movement of those products under excise duty suspension, where the owners are linked to the perpetrators of the offence by a contractual relationship making them their agents — under which the authorised warehousekeeper is declared jointly and severally liable for payment of those sums, with no possibility for him to escape that liability by providing proof that he had nothing whatsoever to do with the acts of the perpetrators of the offence, even if, under national law, that warehousekeeper was neither the owner of those products at the time when the offence was committed nor linked to the perpetrators of that offence by a contractual relationship making them his agents.
Informatiesoort: Nieuws
Rubriek: Europees belastingrecht, Accijns en verbruiksbelastingen
H&I: Previews