22.6.2020

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 209/19

(Case C-169/20)

(2020/C 209/26)

Language of the case: Portuguese

Parties

Applicant: European Commission (represented by: M. França and C. Perrin, Agents)

Defendant: Portuguese Republic

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:

—declare that, in not applying depreciation to the environmental component when calculating the value applicable to used vehicles imported into Portuguese territory, purchased in other Member States, in the calculation of registration tax, the Portuguese Republic has failed to fulfil its obligations under Article 110 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union;

—order the Portuguese Republic to pay the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The Portuguese legislation at issue provides for discrimination between the taxation of imported vehicles and the taxation imposed on similar national vehicles. The detailed rules and method of calculation in force almost always result in imported vehicles being taxed more heavily.

That situation is all the more worrying, since it is contrary to the settled case-law of the Court of Justice: the Portuguese legislation on the calculation of the tax applicable to used vehicles purchased in other Member States has already been the subject of previous infringement proceedings and various judgments of the Court of Justice.

The Portuguese legislation does not ensure that the used vehicles imported from other Member States are taxed in an amount not exceeding the tax reflected in similar used national vehicles. This may be explained by the fact that, as a result of the amendment of the legislation in 2016, depreciation is not applied to the environmental component used to calculate the value of a used vehicle.

Accordingly, the depreciation table enacted by the national legislation does not result in a reasonable approximation of the actual value of the used imported vehicle. Consequently, the amount paid to register a used imported vehicle exceeds the amount for a similar used vehicle already registered in Portugal, which constitutes an infringement of Article 110 TFEU and the case-law of the Court of Justice.