The European Commission has decided to bring an action in the Court of Justice against Italy for imposing the Sicilian environmental tax. The Commission considers that this tax, which is essentially levied on natural gas from Algeria, infringes the European Community’s Common Customs Tariff and runs counter to the basic principles governing the common commercial policy and the EU’s international obligations under the Cooperation Agreement with Algeria. The Italian authorities have not replied to the reasoned opinion (the second stage of the infringement proceedings provided for in Article 226 of the EC Treaty) sent to them in July 2004, nor have they brought the Italian legislation on the above tax into line with Community law.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 20th, 2004 at 10:59 and is filed under Customs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.