Opinion of Mr Advocate General Mancini

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. The case to which this opinion relates arises from a question referred to this Court for a preliminary ruling by the Hessisches Finanzgericht [Finance Court, Hessen], in an action pending before it between the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, and the Hauptzollamt [Principal Customs Office] at the local airport. In particular, the national court asks the Court of Justice to rule on the validity of a Commission decision on the importation free of Common Customs Tariff duties of educational, scientific or cultural materials. According to that decision, the conditions necessary for such a benefit to be granted were not fulfilled because apparatus of equivalent value was currently being manufactured in the Community.

2. In March 1980, the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, imported into the Federal Republic of Germany from the United States an apparatus described as an Nd-YAG laser system DCR-1A with ancillary equipment, manufactured by the Quanta Ray company, for the purposes of a research project concerning chemiluminescent atomic reactions, deactivating of excited iodine atoms by chemical and physical quenching, formation of excited iodine molecules and monitoring of chemiluminescents.

3. The rules according to which the equivalence of scientific instruments is to be assessed are contained in Regulation No 1798/75 of the Council on the importation free of Common Customs Tariff duties of educational, scientific and cultural materials (Official Journal 1975, L 184, p. 1). That regulation was later amended by Council Regulation No 1027/79 (Official Journal 1979, L 134, p. 1) and supplemented by an implementing Regulation, No 2784/79, which was adopted by the Commission on 12 December 1979 and came into force on 1 January 1980 (Official Journal 1979, L 318, p. 32).

4. I have already given an account of the facts of the case as they appear from the written procedure. In the course of the hearing however, new factors emerged to which it is useful to refer because of the light they throw on the subject-matter of the dispute and because of the contribution they make, indirect though it may be, to resolution of that dispute.

5. I am obviously not in a position to express an opinion on whether or not that claim is technically justified, just as I cannot say whether or not the contrary conclusion arrived at by the experts is justified (although the events to which I have just referred give rise to many serious doubts in that connection). According to the case-law of the Court, however, no decision on such a matter is expected of the Court. The Court's task is to decide whether the Commission, when comparing the two lasers, took due account of the characteristic which the Goethe University considered essential for the carrying out of its project; and, if it failed to do so, whether it has adopted an invalid decision.

6. It has thus been established that an incorrect interpretation of the rules regarding importation free of customs duties caused the Commission to base its decision as to equivalence not on the specific features of the research but purely on the type of project presented by Goethe University. Consequently, it did not accord the necessary importance to the special characteristic of the imported laser which the university considered essential for the successful conduct of the project.

1 Translated from the Italian.