The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has recently emphasised the importance of the general principles of EU law – in particular the principle of proportionality – for the interpretation of the excise duty directives. The fact-based and flexible interpretation is a welcome development and should lead to a limitation of the overly formal interpretation of excise duty legislation in many EU member states, based on a proper assessment of individual cases.

Legal Media Group’s Expert Guides recognizes two BLOMSTEIN partners as rising stars. Roland Stein (for International Trade), for the second consecutive time, and Max Klasse (for Competition and Antitrust) have been named “Rising Stars” in the 2016 edition of the Guide to Leading Attorneys – Expert Guides.

In spite of adverse publicity on Iranian nuclear procurement activities and the Iranian rocket program in the last couple of days, a snap back of the lifted sanctions against Iran is currently not pending.

The New German Cultural Property Protection Act will enter into force by 1 August 2016. Click here to read an article on the new law by Anna Blume Huttenlauch, which was published on 8 July 2016 in Süddeutsche Zeitung.

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The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy has presented its long awaited proposal for the draft legislation implementing the European Commission’s damages directive (the Directive) into German law (link). The draft legislation (the Proposal) is part of a wider reform of the German Act against Restraints of Competition (ARC), which addresses the following aspects:

• Implementation of the Directive

• Closing the so-called “sausage gap”

• Dealing with certain challenges brought about by digital transformation.

Aside from the political, social, cultural and economic dimensions that have been debated extensively over the past months, the vote of the British people to leave the EU will have legal implications that cannot be fully grasped yet in their full scope. Nonetheless, companies on both sides of the channel must already prepare today.

BLOMSTEIN has advised Siemens AG in its litigation against the main customs office Munich (HZA) in front of the Federal Supreme Tax Court.

BLOMSTEIN is pleased to announce that Reinhart Rüsken has joined the firm and Dr. Hans-Joachim Prieß will join the firm as of 1 May 2016. Both will act as Of Counsel and assist BLOMSTEIN’s clients particularly in international trade and public procurement matters.

On 7 April 2016, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) confirmed the position of our client ADM in a legal dispute with the German customs authorities (case C-294/14). ADM had brought action against an import duty assessment of the Regional Customs Office of Hamburg before the Finance Court of Hamburg, which submitted the case to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling. The CJEU now confirmed ADM’s legal interpretation of EU customs laws.

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