Judgment_paragraph 65 · Ministero dell'Economia e delle Finanze and Others v Francesco Cimmino and Others (C-607/13)

65In that regard, as the Court held in SICES and Others (C‑155/13, EU:C:2014:145, paragraphs 37 to 39), for it to be possible to regard transactions such as those at issue in the main proceedings as being designed to confer an undue advantage on the purchaser in the European Union, it is necessary that the importers intended to confer such an advantage on that purchaser and that the transactions be devoid of any economic and commercial justification for those importers, which it is for the referring court to establish. Even if such transactions are based on the desire of the purchaser to benefit from the preferential rate of duty and even if the importers concerned are aware of that, those transactions may not, a priori, be regarded as being devoid of economic justification for the importers. It cannot, however, be excluded that, in certain circumstances, such transactions were artificially created with the essential aim of benefiting from the preferential rate of duty.