Opinion of Advocate General Campos Sánchez-Bordona in the case Wallenborn Transports.
Campos Sánchez-Bordona proposes that the Court should reply as follows to the questions referred for a preliminary ruling: The first paragraph of Article 61 and the first subparagraph of Article 71(1) of Council Directive 2006/112/EC must be interpreted as meaning that:
(a) the reference to "the arrangements or situations referred to" in Article 156 of the directive includes free zones in the sense of possible zones for the importation of goods into the territory of the European Union; and
(b) when a customs debt under Article 203(1) of the Community Customs Code is incurred due to the removal from customs supervision of goods in a free zone, this gives rise to the chargeable event and import VAT becoming chargeable if it is reasonable to presume that the goods were able to enter the economic network of the Union, which is a matter for the national court to determine.
Where a customs debt has been incurred under Article 203 of the Community Customs Code and it has been established that, due to the circumstances of the case, VAT is not chargeable, Article 204 of the Community Customs Code cannot be applied in order to give rise to a VAT charge.
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