circular economy,  compliance e AEO

F-gas, trade compliance, AEO and environnement protection

The Judgment of the General Court (First Chamber, Extended Composition) issued on 22 March 2023 for the joined cases T‑825/19 and T‑826/19 established that “…under Article 16(3) of Regulation No 517/2014, any undertaking, understood as a natural or legal person taken individually, which lawfully placed HFCs on the market from 1 January 2015 and made the declaration provided for in that regulation is entitled to a reference value upon the triennial recalculation of the reference values. However, by providing that several undertakings having the same beneficial owner are, under certain conditions, to be considered as one single undertaking for the purposes of Regulation No 517/2014, Article 7(1) of Implementing Regulation 2019/661 amended that system established by its basic regulation by adding conditions that are not provided for in the basic regulation for determining the right of undertakings to receive reference values…”.

The General court added that “…In doing so, the Commission has also amended the system for the allocation of HFC quotas established by Regulation No 517/2014 as a single producer or importer within the meaning of Article 7(1) of Implementing Regulation 2019/661 is allocated, as part of its sole reference value, not only the HFC quotas corresponding to the quantities of HFCs that it previously placed on the market, but also the quotas corresponding to the quantities of HFCs placed on the market by the other undertakings with the same beneficial owner, while those undertakings lose the right to their own reference value and to the quotas in respect of such a value…”.

In the light ot the mentioned judgement, it is interesting to highlight that:

  1. This judgment demonstrates how it is still high the attention of the European regulatory and customs autorities on the ozone deploying substances import. These entities enforce regulation based on multilateral environment agreements (MEA);
  2. the MEA is the main way to manage the multinational and common ecological problems; It mixes the environment care with the promotion of the trade through some legal and customs measures;
  3. In other words, the MEA, in compliance with the both WTO regulations and the international customs organization (WCO) ones, are designing  a special area of focus on the environmental problems inside the trade and customs law
  4. The AEO approach is the main way to manage the customs/trade compliance obligations.