Opinion of Mr advocate general capotorti

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. I shall begin by briefly summarizing the facts which lie at the origin of this reference for a preliminary ruling.

2. I think it convenient to make a brief summary of the content of the international and Italian legal provisions to which the national court has referred in its order.

3. It is settled that the Court of Justice has no jurisdiction to determine, in rulings based on Article 177 of the EEC Treaty, the compatibility of particular national provisions with Community law. But there is a consistent body of case-law to the effect that it may, when presented with an imprecisely worded reference for a preliminary ruling, identify the question of Community law in terms which enable it to give a ruling. In this case, the general question on which the Italian court is asking for guidance is clearly that of interpreting the fundamental principles in the EEC Treaty on the free movement of goods, and in particular the principles applicable to the rules concerning imports, in order to establish whether they may preclude national rules which, by subjecting the normal importation of motor vehicles to the payment of value added tax, prohibit persons residing in the territory of that State from making use of motor vehicles which have benefited from the arrangements for temporary importation, and thus from the exemption from that tax.

4. In the light of all those considerations I propose that the reply to the question which has been referred to the Court by the Tribunale di Ravenna by the order of 26 November 1979, should be as follows:

1 Translated from the Italian.