16.6.2012

Official Journal of the European Union

C 174/15

(Case C-125/12)

2012/C 174/22

Language of the case: Spanish

Referring court

Parties to the main proceedings

Questions referred

1.Must Article 199(1)(g) of Council Directive 2006/112/EC (1) of 28 November 2006 on the common system of value added tax, providing as it does that ‘1. Member States may provide that the person liable for payment of VAT is the taxable person to whom any of the following supplies are made: … (g) the supply of immovable property sold by a judgment debtor in a compulsory sale procedure’, be interpreted, in court proceedings that are creditor proceedings initiated by a declaration as to the insolvency of that debtor, to the effect that it refers only to transfers which strictly reflect the fact that the proceedings are liquidation proceedings or that they have reached the phase of liquidation, with the result that the disposal of such immovable property must take place as a consequence of the liquidation of all the debtor’s assets, or, given that insolvency proceedings may end, among other possibilities, with the liquidation of the insolvent undertaking, does it also cover any transfers of immovable property carried out in the course of insolvency proceedings by a debtor declared insolvent?

2.Must Article 199(1)(g) of Council Directive 2006/112/EC of 28 November 2006 on the common system of value added tax be interpreted to the effect that the ‘compulsory sale procedure’ to which it refers includes a collective judicial insolvency procedure in which there has been a voluntary sale, unconnected with any phase of compulsory liquidation of the debtor’s assets and for reasons merely of timeliness, of any one or more of its assets; or, on the contrary, does it refer only to sales ordered in enforcement proceedings intended to liquidate the assets of the judgment debtor?

3.In the latter case, if Article 199(1)(g) of Council Directive 2006/112/EC of 28 November 2006 on the common system of value added tax refers strictly to sales in enforcement proceedings intended to liquidate the assets of a judgment debtor, may that provision be interpreted as excluding reversal of the position regarding the taxable person for VAT purposes in any case where immovable property is transferred by a debtor declared insolvent because such transfer is timely and conducive to the interests of the insolvency and the transfer is unconnected with any procedure for liquidation of all the debtor’s assets, with the result that it is necessary to disapply a national law which has extended the material scope of Article 199(1)(g) of Directive 2006/112 to cases which that provision does not contemplate?

(1) OJ L 347, p. 1.