The Hamburg Tax Court (judgment of 19.06.2015 – 4 K 147/14) recently had to decide on the consequences of a failure to involve a party concerned in the extension of an anti-dumping duty.
The first imposition or extension of an anti-dumping duty is subject to a specific proceeding. The Commission is launching an investigation and invites all interested parties in the Official Journal of the European Union to apply for a questionnaire within certain deadlines and to return the completed questionnaire. She sends the questionnaires herself to well-known importers.
The company concerned brought an action against a tax decision which also imposed an anti-dumping duty. In justifying its decision, the applicant relied on the fact that, as an importer, it had not received a questionnaire from the Commission either for known importers or for interested parties.
The FG Hamburg dismissed the action. The sending of the questionnaires serves the collection of information for the Commission. It is therefore precisely not about the safeguarding of the importers’ rights of participation or even their rights of defence. It could not be established in this respect that the subsequent anti-dumping regulation would have been adopted on the basis of insufficient information, nor was it submitted with sufficient justification. Accordingly, the applicant’s failure to participate had no effect, either on the legality of the anti-dumping regulation or on the corresponding tax assessment. Moreover, no one could invoke the lack of knowledge of Union law published in the Official Journal.
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