Opinion of Mr Advocate General Tesauro

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. This reference for a preliminary ruling concerns the method of calculating the cost of transport for the purposes of determining the customs value.

2. Under Article 8(1) of Council Regulation (EEC) No 1224/80, in determining the customs value, it is necessary to add to the price actually paid or payable for the imported goods the cost of transport... to the place of introduction of the goods into the customs territory of the Community.

3. The basic objective of Regulation No 1224/80 is to foster world trade by introducing a fair, uniform and neutral form of customs valuation excluding the use of arbitrary or fictitious values (see the sixth recital in the preamble to the regulation). Moreover, as I have already pointed out, with regard specifically to calculating the cost of transport, the basic principle must be that, as the case-law of the Court bears out, the customs value includes the costs actually incurred by the buyer in transporting the goods to the place of introduction into the customs territory of the Community. Conversely, costs falling on the goods in connection with transport within the Community must be deducted from the price of those goods.

4. Where the costs relating to the journeys outside and within the Community are invoiced separately there is no difficulty in establishing the relevant actual costs. The invoices submitted by the person concerned represent, subject to verification, the costs actually incurred.

5. In my view it is not possible to find such a criterion in Article 15(2)(a) of Regulation No 1224/80, upon which the national authority based its adoption of the measure at issue in the main proceedings. That provision provides that:

6. In the absence of any other provision which is specifically applicable to the facts described by the national court, a rule must be found, if necessary by analogy, which allows the value at issue to be calculated in accordance with the objectives and principles of Regulation No 1224/80.

7. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that the regulation also proposes a different solution to the problem at issue. In the present case the source of the difficulty is the fact that, in the absence of separate invoices, it is not possible to determine precisely the charges falling on the goods for the journey outside the Community. That situation could be treated in the same way as cases in which transport is free or provided by the buyer, which are covered and treated identically by Article 15(2)(c) of the regulation. In particular, it is of assistance to point out that where transport is provided by the buyer it is also impossible to determine the precise cost of the journey outside the Community and it is precisely for that reason that the regulation provides that the costs to the place of introduction into the Community are to be calculated by way of an estimate in accordance with the schedule of freight rates normally applied for the same modes of transport.

8. Moreover, it should be pointed out that there is no substantial difference between the two criteria examined; in both cases the valuation is estimated on the basis of the standard schedule of freight rates; furthermore, it is reasonable to assume that they should, in practice, lead to the same results. Therefore, in my view the Court should rule that the national authority can apply one or other of those criteria, giving preference in each particular case to the one which enables the most complete and accurate information to be used and, therefore, the most reliable estimate to be made of the actual cost of the journey outside the Community.

9. In the light of the foregoing observations I propose that the following reply should be made to the national court:

1 Original language: Iulian.

2 Council Regulation (EEC) No 1224/80 of 28 May 1980 (OJ 1980, L 134, p. 1).

3 See the judgment of 10 December 1970 in Case 27/70 Editing v Hauptzottaml Hamburg [1970] ECR 1035.

4 See the judgment of 14 February 1980 in Case 84/79 Meyer-Uetze v Hauptzollamt Bad Reichenhall [19801 ECR 291.