Portuguese Republic v Transnáutica — Transportes e Navegação SA (C-506/09 P)

Judgment of 22 Mar 2012

law://eu/cjeu/2009/c-506-09/para_32@2026-11-12

32In paragraphs 56 and 57 of the judgment under appeal, the General Court considered the obligations on the customs authorities in relation to assessing the amount of the guarantee. In that context, it found that the fact that the economic operator was known and that Transnáutica had never previously marketed sensitive goods such as tobacco and ethyl alcohol are circumstances which should have attracted closer scrutiny from the customs authorities and did not — as the Commission contended — justify an easing of the monitoring. Accordingly, in paragraph 58 of that judgment, the General Court held as follows:‘...to burden [Transnáutica] with a customs debt resulting from the choice of those authorities, connected, as the case may be, with the prosecution of infringements, would be inimical to the objective of the fairness clause which underlies Article 905 of the Implementing Regulation, inasmuch as [Transnáutica] would find itself thus placed in a special situation that would go beyond the normal commercial risk relating to its business (see, to that effect, [Case C-61/98] De Haan [[1999] ECR I-5003, paragraph 53], Case C-62/05 P Nordspedizionieri di Danielis Livio and Others v Commission [2007] ECR I-8647, paragraph 51, and [Case T-205/99] Hyper v Commission [[2002] ECR II-3141, paragraph 95]).’

Portuguese Republic v Transnáutica — Transportes e Navegação SA (C-506/09 P)

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