Opinion of Mr advocate-general Roemer

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

The request for a preliminary ruling on which I am called upon to give an opinion today concerns questions with which I have already dealt in Case 30/71. My preliminary observations may therefore be quite brief.

As you are aware, from 12 August 1968 to 8 April 1969 the plaintiff in the main action applied for customs clearance at various German customs offices for goods corning from Yugoslavia or Denmark which had been purchased for various Swiss and English firms. The products were described as diet mayonnaise, I A mayonnaise or salad mayonnaise. Certain of them bore more information regarding their composition, that is, basically 83 % fats, 6.5 % egg yolk, 0.5 % salt and 5 % acetic acid. In accordance with the application made the imported products were classified under tariff heading 21.04 B of the Common Customs Tariff, that is, they were regarded as sauces, mixed condiments and mixed seasonings and the requisite customs duties were imposed. However samples were taken from a consignment and examined by the Zolltechnische Prüfungs- und Lehranstalt (Customs Technology Research and Training Institute) of Munich which considered that the goods in question constituted food preparations under tariff heading 21.07. In the meantime the principal customs office at Munchen-Schwanthalerstra ße requested the Betriebsprüfungsstelle-Zoll (Customs Division of the Businesses Inspectorate) to carry out an inspection of all the imports made by the plaintiff. As a result of these inspections it came to the conclusion that in every case the principal component of the goods was milk fats. The customs office therefore assigned the products imported to tariff heading 21.07 and, because the commercial rules contained in Regulation No 160/66 (OJ L 14, p. 1) in part covered the products governed by this heading, it claimed payment of higher import duties on the basis of this fat content.

As the Gervais undertaking did not agree with the new assessment it lodged an objection to it, and, when this failed, brought an action before the Finanzgericht München. In view of the questions of Community law raised by this action the Finanzgericht München by an order of 23 July 1971 stayed the proceedings and referred the following questions to you for a prelirninary ruling:

As I have already said and as is plainly the case these questions are in part verbatim the same and in fact have the same meaning as those raised in Case 30/71. It is only necessary today to consider whether, in the present case, new arguments have been submitted on the basis of which the statements contained in the judgment in Case 30/71 require to be amended or supplemented. In this respect I must make the following observations:

1 Translated from the German.