Opinion of Mr Advocate General Mancini

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. In connection with a dispute between Stinnes AG, of Mühlheim-Ruhr, and the Hauptzollamt [Principal Customs Office], Kassel, the Hessisches Finanzgericht [Finance Court, Hesse] has requested the Court for an interpretation of Article 8 of Council Regulation No 1697/79 of 24 July 1979 on the post-clearance recovery of import duties or export duties which have not been required of the person liable for payment on goods entered for a customs procedure involving the obligation to pay such duties (Official Journal 1979, L 197, p. 1). The first paragraph of Article 8 provides as follows: Ño action shall be taken for the post-clearance recovery of import duties or export duties where the amount involved for a given action for recovery is less than 10 European units of account. In particular the Finanzgericht asks about the meaning of the phrase a given action for recovery and the method of calculating the amounts to be recovered.

2. In 1981 Stinnes imported from Czechoslovakia into the Federal Republic of Germany a total of 502 consignments of wooden pallets. Owing to an error in the calculation of the transport costs, the import duty determined by the Hauptzollamt Kassel was lower than the amount which was legally due. On discovering the mistake (which is not contested by Stinnes), the Hauptzollamt issued four recovery orders in which the 502 transactions effected in 1981 were grouped together by quarter and the total import duty outstanding was assessed at DM 5285.80.

3. In the procedure before the Court of Justice written observations were submitted by the Commission of the European Communities and Stinnes AG.

4. The wording of the preliminary question is clear. First, it asks the meaning of the term a given action for recovery, contained in Article 8 of Regulation No 1697/79. It is then necessary to determine the legality, again on the basis of that provision, of the practice by which (a) several import or export transactions effected by one person are combined in one general recovery order and (b) payment is required of the total amount obtained by adding together all the underpayments, that is to say the difference between the duty paid and the duty legally due for each transaction.

5. On the basis of all the considerations set out above, I propose that the Court should answer the question submitted by the Hessisches Finanzgericht by order of 10 August 1984, in the case pending before it between Stinnes AG and Hauptzollamt Kassel, as follows:

1 Translated from the Italian.