Category: Free movement of goods

AG Bot puts Belgium in Catch 22 position… or not

The future judgement in Joined Cases C-204-208/12 Essent Belgium N.V. v. Vlaamse Reguleringsinstantie voor de Elektriciteits- en Gasmarkt could very well be one of those landmark cases in which the CJEU clarifies one of the fundamental doctrinal issues in internal market law: can Member States rely upon the rule of reason to justify distinctly applicable measures? In his Opinion, Advocate General Bot makes a convincing case that this should (under strict conditions) indeed be the case.

In this case, the Belgian government fined Essent Belgium for failure to comply with Belgian legislation requiring electricity suppliers to purchase a certain amount of green energy from Belgian suppliers. As many readers will no doubt notice, this case is very similar to PreussenElektra, however, the legislative context and European electricity market have undergone substantial changes since that judgment was handed down. Today, EU legislation enables Member States to verify whether electricity produced in other Member States is green. Also, EU legislation now requires Member States to reach certain national targets for contribution to green electricity production.

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Case E-19/11: EFTA-Court finds no smoking gun in caffeinated alcoholic drinks case

With our eyes glued on the Court of Justice, it is sometimes easy to overlook the work of its less-famous cousin, the EFTA Court, also situated in Luxembourg, just a stone’s throw away from the CJEU. Today, our attention turns to the judges of the European Economic Area, after they delivered an interesting case on the free movement of goods this morning. Continue reading →

Case C-171/11 Fra.bo: Horizontal Effect of Article 34 TFEU

Yesterday, the Court decided to give horizontal effect to Article 34 TFEU on the free movement of goods. In the Fra.bo case, the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf had asked whether a private-law association (DVGW) ought to be subject to the principle of free movement of goods. The organisation at issue operates both to draw up technical standards for products used in the drinking water supply sector and to certify products based on these standards.

As Laurens has pointed out in his post on the Advocate General’s opinion, the Court has accepted such horizontal effect for the other Treaty freedoms, but not yet for the case of the free movement of goods. Advocate General Trstenjak, however, suggested in her Opinion to extend the reasoning of cases like Bosman, Viking and Laval by analogy. Based on their horizontal effect, fundamental freedoms could thus be imposed in cases where non-public organisations held the power to draw up certain kinds of collective rules. In the present case, the German private organization DVGW possessed in her view a de facto competence to determine what fittings could be offered for sale on the market in pipes and accessories for drinking water supply in Germany (para 41). The Advocate General pointed out that horizontal effect was required by the effet utile of European Union law because (paras 46 ff.) the abolition of obstacles to trade imposed on Member States might otherwise be compromised by obstacles erected by private parties. Also, the fact that some Member States would rely on public standardisation bodies while others turn to private organisations may lead to inequalities in the application of EU law. Continue reading →

Procuring military equipment under the public procurement directive

As one of the last bastions of purely national competence, trade in arms is excluded from the application of the Treaty rules. Article 346 TFEU provides that the Treaties do not preclude Member States to trade and procure war material for the protection of the essential interests of its security. Nonetheless, this provision is strictly interpreted by the Court and the case discussed here exemplifies that only goods intended for specifically military purposes qualify for the exemption under article 346 TFEU. But what exactly is equipment intended for specifically military purposes?

At issue in case C-615/10 Ins Tiimi is the procurement of the Finnish defense authorities of tiltable turntable equipment. This equipment is used to facilitate the ‘carrying-out of electromagnetic measurements and the simulation of combat situations’. As such it was argued by the Finnish authorities that it was procured for military purposes. Ins Tiimi, a company which lost the tender, did not agree, claiming that the equipment could be used  for civilian uses as well. Whether or not the tiltable turntable equipment qualified for the exemption was important because otherwise the procurement procedure had to comply with the public procurement directive (directive 2004/18/EC).

There are essentially two conditions that Member States have to fulfill in order to escape the application of EU law according to article 346 TFEU when procuring military material:

  • The measures relating to military procurement must concern ‘arms, munitions and war material’;
  • And secondly, those measures must be necessary for the protection of the essential interests of the security of that Member State.

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Fair-trade coffee and tea under the procurement directive

Can public authorities procure fair trade products, or are they debarred from specifically referring to the fair trade qualities of those products under the public procurement directive (directive 2004/18/EC)? This is one of the issues underlying the judgment of the Court in Case C-368/10 Commission v. Netherlands.

In 2008, the Dutch province of North Holland announced in a tendering procedure that it wished to procure coffee machines and the products necessary to make them function (coffee, tea, sugar, milk, cups). It required that those products to be delivered to bear the Max Havelaar label, a private label that adheres to the rules of the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation. Considering that this tender was contrary to the public procurement directive (2004/18/EC) the Commission started an infringement procedure against the Netherlands.

Obviously, specifically requiring products to bear only that label is contrary to EU public procurement law, as it is way too over specific and does not allow for any form of competition for the contract. However, the Court made – for the first time – some interesting points on procuring fair trade products in general.

The two points I will discuss are:

  • Fair trade requirements to products cannot be part of technical specifications but are conditions relating to the performance of the contract;
  •  Fair trade criteria can be used as award criteria for public supply contracts.

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Opinion of Advocate General Jääskinen in Case C-5/11 Donner

The case I wish to highlight in this post is the Opinion of Advocate General Jääskinen in Case C-5/11 Donner, concerning a rather crafty and ingenious attempt by Mr. Donner to circumvent the application of certain German copyright laws. Mr. Donner sold various types of ‘Bauhaus’ furniture which was protected by German copyright, but not protected by Italian copyright. Although Mr Donner targeted German customers through advertisements in Germany and a website in German, he sold these products not in Germany but from a warehouse in Italy through cooperation with an Italian company called Dimensione. Those products could nonetheless be delivered optionally to German customers by the Italian company Imspem (owned by Mr. Donner).

One of the questions the Advocate General answers in this case is whether the conduct of Mr. Donner leads to ‘distribution to the public’, that is the German public, within the meaning of the Copyright Directive. Mr. Donner, of course, considers that these products were distributed to the public in Italy, not in Germany. The Copyright Directive provides in Article 4(1) that ‘Member States shall provide for authors, in respect of the original of their works or of copies thereof, the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit any form of distribution to the public by sale or otherwise’. The Advocate General considers that the products were distributed to the public in Germany:

55.      In the situation of cross border distance selling arrangements, the assessment of whether copies are made available to the public in the Member State where enforcement of copyright is sought must be based on the criteria elaborated by the Court in L’Oréal and Others. (38) If a seller targets consumers in a given Member State and creates or makes available to them a specific delivery arrangement and method of payment that enables consumers to purchase copies of copyright protected works in that Member State, then there is distribution by sale in that Member State. (39) The existence of a German language website, the content of Dimensione’s marketing material, and their sustained cooperation with Inspem, as an undertaking engaged in sales and delivery to Germany, all point toward a targeted exercise. What is important is whether the seller has created a targeted sales and delivery channel for buyers to acquire works that are copyright protected in the buyer’s Member State.

56.      In this respect the way the delivery of the copies is organised is of secondary importance. There is distribution by sale from Member State A to the targeted public in Member State B even if under the distribution scheme the copies of the works are delivered by mail or a distribution service. But the extent of the involvement of the carrier in the selling arrangement affects the question whether the carrier is to be considered as a participant in the distribution scheme or merely an intermediary referred to in Article 8(3) of the Copyright Directive, (40) whose services are used by a third party. Such an intermediary may be made subject to injunctions, but not to sanctions under Article 8(1) of the Copyright Directive and the corresponding provision in Article 11 of the Enforcement Directive.

Horizontal direct effect of article 34 TFEU?

In her recent Opinion in case C-171/11 Fra.bo SpA v. Deutsche Vereinigung des Gas- und Wasserfaches eV (DVGW), Advocate General Trstenjak has broken a lance for horizontal direct effect of article 34 TFEU. Until now, the Court has always denied horizontal direct effect of the free movement of goods provisions, in contrast to the other fundamental freedoms.

In her reasoning she uses the analogy of the application of horizontal direct effect to justify the extension of the free movement of goods rules to apply to private persons. The case concerned the refusal by a German private organisation DVGW to certify the brass sockets produced by the Italian company Fra.bo. If certified by DVGW, German legislation would presume that the brass sockets were in conformity with its legislation and usable in German water supply.

Instead of interpreting the concept of public body in such a broad way as to include DVGW, the Advocate General choose to apply the Bosman,Viking and Laval cases by analogy, arguing that “rules of any other nature aimed at regulating in a collective manner gainful employment, self-employment and the provision of services” should also be extended to the case at hand and the free movement of goods.

This was so because DVGW had, in fact, legislative cometence:

 42.      Compte tenu de cette compétence de fait dont disposent DVGW et sa filiale à 100 % pour déterminer quels produits pour le montage, l’extension, la modification ou l’entretien d’installations d’eau potable situées après le point de raccordement du bâtiment ont des chances de se vendre sur le marché allemand et, donc, peuvent être commercialisés, leur activité de normalisation et de certification ne peut pas être exclue du champ d’application de la libre circulation des marchandises.

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