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27.02.2025

Tax & Financial Standards New Judgments of the ECJ For February 2025

Tax & Financial Standards New Judgments of the ECJ For February 2025

February

С-677/22 of 6 February 2025

Combating late payment in commercial transactions — Commercial transactions between undertakings — Obligation on Member States to ensure that the period for payment set in the contract concluded between undertakings does not exceed 60 calendar days — Possibility, for contracting parties, to set a longer period for payment — Condition for the express agreement in the contract of such a period — Condition that a contractual term is not grossly unfair to the creditor — Cumulative conditions — Contracts in which the terms are determined unilaterally by one of the parties — Contractual term by which the debtor unilaterally sets the period for payment of 120 days

Key aspects of the decision in the economic range:

Obligation of Member States to ensure that the period for payment fixed in the contract does not exceed 60 calendar days, ‘unless otherwise expressly agreed in the contract’. Contracts concluded following a sale by auction or a tender procedure. In Directive 2011/7/EU on combating late payment in commercial transactions the expression ‘otherwise expressly agreed in the contract’ precludes a contractual term setting a period for payment longer than 60 calendar days from being determined unilaterally by the debtor, unless it can be established, having regard to all the contractual documents and terms contained in that contract, that the parties to that contract have expressed their concurrence of wills to be bound specifically by the term concerned.
Proceedings, concerning the legality of a contractual term by which P. unilaterally fixed a period for payment of 120 calendar days applicable to invoices relating to contracts.

С-472/23 of 13 February 2025

Credit agreements for consumers – Duty to provide information – Annual percentage rate of charge – Modification of charges and commissions – National rules on penalties – Principle of proportionality

Key aspects of the decision in the economic range:

The fact that a credit agreement specifies an APRC which proves to be overstated because certain terms of that agreement are subsequently found to be unfair and, therefore, are not binding on the consumer, does not constitute in itself an infringement of the obligation to provide information. National legislation which provides, in the event of infringement of the obligation to provide information for a uniform penalty.
Proceedings concerning an application for repayment of a sum representing the interest and charges paid by a consumer under a consumer credit agreement that the consumer had concluded with the bank.

С-233/23 of 25 February 2025

Competition — Dominant position — Refusal of an undertaking in a dominant position which has developed a digital platform to allow access to that platform by a third-party undertaking which has developed an app, by ensuring that platform is interoperable with that app — Assessment of whether access to a digital platform is indispensable — Need for the undertaking in a dominant position to develop a template for a category of apps in order to allow access — Definition of the relevant downstream market

Key aspects of the decision in the economic range:

Abuse of a dominant position. Digital markets. The refusal, by an undertaking in a dominant position which has developed a digital platform, to ensure, at the request of a third-party undertaking, that that platform is interoperable with an app developed by that third-party undertaking is capable of constituting an abuse of a dominant position. Need for the dominant undertaking to develop a software template. Time and resources constraints. Line between legitimate and illegitimate means of competition by dominant undertakings.
Proceedings between A and G on the one hand, and the Competition and Market Authority, Italy, (‘the AGCM’) on the other, concerning that authority’s decision to impose penalties on those companies for having infringed Article 102 TFEU, on account of the refusal to allow an app developed by a third-party undertaking for the purpose of providing services related to the charging of electric motor vehicles to be interoperable with the A digital platform offered by those companies.