Obligation of an administrative body to re-open proceedings to take into account an ECJ judgement

A Dutch company received exports refunds following specific customs classification of goods it exported outside of the EU. Subsequently, the national authority reclassified the goods and ordered the company to return the refunds. The company appealed to an administrative court that upheld the administrative body ruling as a result of which the administrative body ruling became final. As, subsequently, the Court of Justice (“ECJ”) gave a judgement in a similar case that supported the opinion of the Dutch company, the company requested re-opening of the administrative proceedings and, given the request was dismissed, appealed against such dismissal to the administrative court. The judgement of the ECJ was given in the framework of a request for preliminary ruling submitted by that Dutch administrative court.

The ECJ explained that its rulings define or interpret EC rules as they are and as they should have been applied since their introduction. Therefore, a rule of EC law should be applied by national authorities, as interpreted by the ECJ, also to the relationships that emerged prior to the ECJ ruling which provided the interpretation. That is valid especially when, as in this case, a decision of an administrative body became final only because it had been upheld by a national court as a result of its misinterpreting EC law.

The ECJ took also account that under Dutch law it is possible to re-open administrative proceedings provided that the interests of third parties are not affected.

The ECJ held, therefore, that an administrative body is obliged, under Article 10 of the EC Treaty, to re-open proceedings in order to take account of an ECJ ruling given after its administrative decision became final if (i) national rules allow for re-opening of administrative proceedings, (ii) the administrative decision became final due to a national court judgement delivered in the last instance, (iii) which has been based upon, as obvious from a subsequent ECJ ruling, misinterpretation of EC law whereas the ECJ has not been asked for a preliminary ruling and (iv) the interested party submitted a relevant claim immediately after it became aware of that ECJ ruling.

Given that Czech law allows for re-opening of administrative proceedings under certain specified conditions, we may assume that the conclusions of this ESJ judgement will be applicable in the Czech Republic after its accession to the EU.