52However, as the Court has previously held, when the EU legislature intended to allow Member States to derogate from the regime of mandatory exemption introduced by Directive 2003/96, it did so explicitly in, respectively, the second sentence of Article 14(1)(a) of Directive 2003/96, which states that Member States may tax energy products used to produce electricity for reasons relating to the protection of the environment, and in the second sentence of the third subparagraph of Article 21(5) of that directive, under which Member States which exempt electricity generated by small producers of electricity must tax the energy products used for the generation of that electricity (judgment of 7 March 2018, Cristal Union, C‑31/17, EU:C:2018:168, paragraph 27).
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