A Regional Court (CZ) rejected a creditor’s application for the registration of his claim in an insolvency proceeding, and determined that after the resolution became final and conclusive, its role in the insolvency proceeding would end. The first-instance court (the Regional Court) started from the fact that the creditors were invited to apply for the registration of their claims by a specific date. However, the application of creditor no. 48 was delivered to the insolvency court almost one year later. The creditor claimed that he was a known creditor of the debtor, as defined in Section 430 of Act No. 182/2006 Coll. on bankruptcy and methods of bankruptcy resolution, and he should have therefore been immediately notified of the initiation of the insolvency proceeding. The first-instance court admitted that the creditor should have been notified of the initiation of the insolvency proceeding, but only provided that the court knew, at the time of the initiation of the insolvency proceeding, that the creditor indeed was a known creditor. A High Court, as the appellate court, upheld the resolution of the first-instance court. As regards the appellant’s request for suspension of the proceeding and referring the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling concerning the interpretation of the term “known creditor domiciled in a Member State of the European Union”, the court did not grant that request, stating that the court’s interpretation was not contrary to the Regulation and that the appellant still had the chance to lodge an extraordinary appeal with the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court of the Czech Republic pointed out that it had dealt with the interpretation of Section 430 of the Insolvency Act before in its decision-making practice and that, in the case of a known creditor, the period for the filing of an application commences as late as the date on which the invitation to file an application is specifically delivered to that creditor. The Supreme Court mentioned, in respect of the request for the reference for a preliminary ruling, that the interpretation and correct application of European Union law were absolutely clear in those matters and that the provided interpretation of European Union law was identically clear to the courts of other Member States and to the Court of Justice of the European Union as well. The Supreme Court vacated the resolutions of the courts of both instances and remanded the case to them for further proceedings.

Invalidity pension benefits disbursed from Romania have to be taken into account in the calculation of the amount of invalidity pension benefits to be disbursed in Hungary in order to prevent their overlapping.

It follows from paragraph 24 of the judgement of the European Court of Justice that the liability of the main carrier or the transport subcontractor is based on physical control of the goods and the knowledge that they are moving under Community transit. In the present case, it was undisputed that the defendant had transported the cargo container containing the goods to the car park of the customs office of destination in Vienna within the applicable deadline and the goods had remained there at the defendant’s trailer until their further transportation to Italy. In Vienna, the defendant also handed over the documents necessary for conducting the customs procedure to his principal. By virtue of paragraphs 31 34 of the judgement of the European Court of Justice, a carrier who transfers control of the goods and the documents pertaining thereto to another carrier by handing over the goods has, in principle, discharged the obligation to produce the goods intact at the customs office of destination, provided that the second carrier is aware that the goods are moving under Community transit. The aforementioned situation is undoubtedly true for the main carrier, and it has also been confirmed by the witness testimony of the representative of the main carrier. The Curia agreed with the legal standpoint of the second instance judgement according to which it could not have been deduced from the judgement of the European Court of Justice that the defendant should have been bound by an obligation to verify the lawful conclusion of the customs procedure at the Vienna customs office prior to the further transportation of the goods in question.

The Curia was of the opinion that the former Code of Civil Procedure’s rules excluding the possibility of requesting the judicial review of the impugned court ruling had not rendered the exercise of the defendants’ rights originating from Community law impossible or excessively difficult, hence, their right to effective judicial protection and to an effective remedy had not been violated. According to the Curia, part of the European Union provisions relevant to the proceedings and referred to in the defendants’ petition for judicial review has already been interpreted by the European Court of Justice, while the correct application of another part of such provisions – in light of the foregoing – was so obvious as to leave no scope for any reasonable doubt. Thus, the Curia was not under the obligation to make a reference for a preliminary ruling.

An OLAF report may be qualified as a piece of evidence approvable in administrative and court proceedings in the same way and under the same conditions as an administrative report (minutes) prepared under the national laws of a given country could be used in such proceedings.

The competent administrative and labour court found that the plaintiff had acquired a more than forty year long accumulated period of employment making her eligible to receive preferential women’s retirement pension in Hungary by taking into consideration both her Hungarian and Romanian employment periods. The amount of the pension benefits had to be calculated based on the rules applicable to old age retirement pension, in particular those rules that involve a calculation method aggregating the periods of employment completed in different EU Member States. With regard to the above, the defendant authority correctly determined the amount of the plaintiff’s partial retirement pension in accordance with Regulation no. 883/2004/EC and Regulation no. 987/2009/EC.

The employee has to plausibly demonstrate that she possesses one or more protected characteristics with regard to which she has been discriminated against, by the employer, compared with her colleague who has been in a comparable situation and she has therefore been given lower wage. Hence, there is no general prohibition on giving different pay for doing the same work, as it is prohibited only if such differentiation is exclusively based on any protected characteristic and is not objectively related to the employment relationship. In the absence of discrimination on grounds of any protected characteristic, the payment of different wages may result from the parties’ free wage bargaining which is based on the principle of freedom of contract. The facts of the case led the Curia to establish that the defendant – pursuant to section 19 of the Anti discrimination Act – had adequately demonstrated that there had been no casual link between the plaintiff’s protected characteristics (gender and age) and the higher wage of her colleague who had been in a comparable situation. If an employee has a greater length of service with more work experience which enables him to perform his duties better, he may be entitled to higher remuneration than his colleagues. In such cases, the principle of equal pay for equal work is not breached.

The legal provision according to which the default interest rate applicable to the service provider has to be equal to the default interest rate applicable to the consumer and a market environment in which other service providers have not applied more favourable general contract terms either, do not mean that the defendant has not gained such unilateral and unjustified advantage which has been detrimental to the other contracting party. The Curia was of the opinion that the fact that the default interest rates were identical in respect of both parties did not counterbalance – with regard to the different conditions and impacts of their interest payment obligation – the disadvantage suffered by the consumer. Hence, the defendant was unable to rebut the presumption of the invalidity of the impugned general contract term.

Section 120 of the Criminal Cooperation in the European Union Act lays down a set of special conditions for the validity of the procedure for the taking over of the execution of a criminal sentence: such taking over may be ordered only on the initiative of the competent foreign judicial authority, and the latter’s initiative as well as a number of supporting documents should be transmitted to the Hungarian Minister of Justice to ultimately decide on such request. As the procedure for legal assistance involves the national authorities of different countries, it cannot be launched unilaterally by the decision of only one national judicial forum (by a Hungarian court in the present case).

The purpose of the application of Article 80, paragraph (1), point a) of the VAT Directive is to prevent tax fraud and tax evasion, irrespective of whether the parties to the transaction were or should have been aware of such tax avoidance.

In the case of the withdrawal of agricultural subsidies, the determination of the amount to be repaid shall be carried out with regard to the fact that the provisions of the relevant EU piece of legislation (Commission Delegated Regulation no. 640/2014/EU), directly applicable in the Member States’ administrative proceedings, are based on the principles of the withdrawal of subsidies and the proportionality of sanctions. This is particularly true when, in cases of force majeure or exceptional circumstances, the beneficiary is unable to comply with his obligations.

Application of the provisions of Directive 2006/126/EC on driving licences due to its direct effect

Liability of a lessee for the payment of exchange difference on the basis of a foreign currency based leasing contract

It follows from paragraph 24 of the judgement of the European Court of Justice that the liability of the main carrier or the transport subcontractor is based on physical control of the goods and the knowledge that they are moving under Community transit. In the present case, it was undisputed that the defendant had transported the cargo container containing the goods to the car park of the customs office of destination in Vienna within the applicable deadline and the goods had remained there at the defendant’s trailer until their further transportation to Italy. In Vienna, the defendant also handed over the documents necessary for conducting the customs procedure to his principal. By virtue of paragraphs 31 34 of the judgement of the European Court of Justice, a carrier who transfers control of the goods and the documents pertaining thereto to another carrier by handing over the goods has, in principle, discharged the obligation to produce the goods intact at the customs office of destination, provided that the second carrier is aware that the goods are moving under Community transit. The aforementioned situation is undoubtedly true for the main carrier, and it has also been confirmed by the witness testimony of the representative of the main carrier. The Curia agreed with the legal standpoint of the second instance judgement according to which it could not have been deduced from the judgement of the European Court of Justice that the defendant should have been bound by an obligation to verify the lawful conclusion of the customs procedure at the Vienna customs office prior to the further transportation of the goods in question.

The Curia applied the Halifax test and was of the opinion that the parties’ contractual arrangements could not be regarded as being of artificial nature, since the parties had sought to follow up on the economic implications of changes in the retail sale of tobacco, thus, they had not primarily aimed at obtaining a tax advantage. The budgetary relationship between the parties involved in the transactions was orderly, and the personal interlinkages between them were insufficient to establish their abusive practice in the field of value added taxation.

in the case of the absence of an accused person with European Union citizenship, the lower instance criminal courts had failed to take all measures to find him by omitting to issue a European arrest warrant in addition to the national one.

The intended purpose of a good may constitute an objective criterion for its classification, if the purpose is closely linked to the given good’s intrinsic characteristics, and this link is to be assessed on the basis of the good’s objective characteristics and properties.

In the adjudication of a legal dispute on the use of sperm in an assisted reproduction procedure, the issue of the application of Directive 2004/23/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council has been raised.

The development of European Union law demonstrates that if the contract is concluded for purposes partly within and partly outside the person’s trade and the trade purpose is so limited as not to be predominant in the overall context of the supply, that person should be considered as a consumer and the contract concluded by him should be regarded as a consumer contract. The Gruber judgement, cited by the final judgement, established in respect of the scope of application of a procedural convention, namely the Brussels Convention that a contract with a dual purpose may be qualified as a consumer contract only if its business use is merely negligible. For the qualification of the contract, the national court should take into consideration not only its content, nature and purpose, but also the objective circumstances in which it was concluded. With regard to the above arguments and the facts and specificities of the case at hand, the Curia concluded that the final judgement of the court of second instance had not violated the provisions of section 206, subsection (1) of the former Code of Civil Procedure and had correctly qualified the dual purpose loan contract in question as a consumer contract.

In its decision of principle, the Curia pointed out that the definition of the term “criminal organisation” given by Article 1, point 1) of Council Framework Decision 2008/841/JHA had no binding effect on the Hungarian courts, because – by virtue of Article 34, paragraph (2), point b) of the Treaty of Maastricht (Treaty on the European Union) – such framework decisions are to be binding upon the Member States as to the result to be achieved but are to leave to the national authorities the choice of form and methods. In addition, framework decisions have no direct effect.

The Curia of Hungary concluded that the defendant company had fixed the plaintiff’s salary in breach of the principles of equal treatment and equal pay for equal work as stipulated in section 12 of Act no. I of 2012 on the Labour Code and had been unable to give an objective justification for the difference in pay, hence, it had failed to comply with its duty to provide evidence as required by section 19 of Act no. CXXV of 2003 on Equal Treatment and the Promotion of Equal Opportunities.

Corporate income tax: conditions for applying a reduced corporate tax rate to a sub-fund of a public limited company with variable share capital

Value added tax: assessment of the value added tax regime for silver commemorative coins

Public procurement: subject-matter of a supplies contract; concept of "product"

Public procurement: non-substantial modification of a contractual obligation in compliance with de minimis limits

National courts' obligation to suspend the proceedings and await the decision of the Court of Justice on the same question of law.

Consumer protection: online shop; offer to buy; payment arrangements; purchase decision

Value added tax: right to dispose of goods as owner; transfer of the ownership of goods

Value added tax: substantive conditions for entitlement to deduct value added tax; taxpayer status; burden of proof