Judgment_paragraph 74 · Gräfendorfer Geflügel- und Tiefkühlfeinkost Produktions GmbH and Others v Hauptzollamt Hamburg and Hauptzollamt Kiel (C-415/20)

74In those circumstances, it should be noted, next, as regards both the customs duties at issue in Cases C‑419/20 and C‑427/20 and the financial penalty at issue in Case C‑415/20, that, as the Court has consistently held, in the absence of EU legislation, it is for the internal legal order of each Member State to lay down the detailed rules according to which interest must be paid in the event of the repayment of sums of money levied in breach of EU law. However, those detailed rules must comply with the principles of equivalence and effectiveness, a requirement whose fulfilment means, inter alia, that those rules must not be framed in such a way as to make the exercise of the right to payment of interest guaranteed by EU law excessively difficult or impossible in practice (see judgments of 19 July 2012, Littlewoods Retail and Others, C‑591/10, EU:C:2012:478, paragraphs 27 and 28, and of 6 October 2015, Târşia, C‑69/14, EU:C:2015:662, paragraphs 26 and 27). Similar requirements also apply in the case of late payment of a sum of money owed under EU law, such as that corresponding to the export refunds at issue in Case C‑415/20.