The Administrative Court of Helsinki (Helsingin hallinto-oikeus) has made a new referral to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on excise duties. The case has been lodged as Case C-596/23, ALKOSTORE24 (Pohjanri), and is known within the Finnish judicial system as case 5328/2023.
When purchasing the goods from a seller’s online store, that offers goods for sale from Germany, customers in Finland are offered a choice of transport goods. They are the distant ‘seller’ of the alcoholic goods. However, in line with Rosengren (Case C-170/04) and Commission v Sweden (Private imports) (Case C-186/05), the seller does not transport the alcoholic goods themselves, but offers potential buyers the option at the online checkout to arrange the transport of the goods from the seller in Germany to their home in Finland.
The private import of alcoholic goods can be subject to excise duties. The referring court in this case is trying to decipher who is to handle the levying of the excise duties in this case: the seller? or the transport?
There is some secondary law here, such as Directive 2008/118, in particular, Article 36; which has been repealed and replaced by Directive 2020/262, laying down the general arrangements for excise duty, in particular, Article 44.
The obvious related cases here are the Rosengren (Case C-170/04), Commission v Sweden (Private imports) (Case C-186/05), Visnapuu (Case C-198/14). This has been explored in great detail in scholarship in articles by Graham Butler, ‘State Monopolies and the Free Movement of Goods in EU Law: Getting Beyond Obscure Clarity’, in Legal Issues of Economic Integration (2021), as well as Graham Butler, ‘Sweden and the Free Movement of Alcoholic Goods in the EU Internal Market’, in European Public Law (2023).
There has also been some recent case-law in the national courts of Sweden on similar issues relating to alcoholic goods sold online from Denmark, and transported to Sweden for delivery to consumers by independent intermediaries. The seller in the Swedish case, Winefinder, ultimately won its case in the Supreme Court of Sweden (Högsta domstolen) in Systembolaget v Winefinder. This national case law has been analysed in Graham Butler, ‘Reimaging the Law on Alcoholic Goods in Sweden’, in Europarättslig tidskrift (2023).
Case C-596/23, ALKOSTORE24 (Pohjanri) has only recently been lodged at the CJEU, and will likely be decided in late 2024, or early 2025.
More information on the case is available on the CJEU website here, and on the page of the Administrative Court of Helsinki here.