39It cannot, however, be excluded that, in certain circumstances, transactions such as those at issue in the main proceedings were artificially created with the essential aim of benefiting from the preferential rate of duty. Thus, amongst the factors which could allow the artificial nature of the transactions to be established are, as the European Commission states in its observations, the fact that the importer holding ‘A’ licences did not accept any commercial risk, since that risk was in reality covered by its purchaser, which is also a traditional importer. Such an artificial nature could also appear from the fact that the importers’ profit margin is insignificant or that the prices of the garlic sold by the importers to the purchaser in the European Union are lower than the market price.
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