This Week in Luxembourg

Among its last judgements before the summer vacation are the following:

The Fourth Chamber held against Anheuser-Busch in the latest installment of the Budweiser litigation. This time, the judgement was on appeal against a 2009 judgement of the CFI in Case T-191/07 Anheuser-Busch v. OHIM, which upheld OHIM's decision favouring the Czech brewery Budějovický Budvar. As it turns out, and despite Anheuser-Busch's best efforts to argue and prove the contrary, the Czechs really do have a valid prior claim, at least in the EU. Anheuser-Busch v. OHIM.

The Third Chamber reaffirmed that under no circumstances can a claim for non-contractual liability of the EU be heard before a national court. In this case, the insolvency administrator of Agenor SA, a Belgian company, wanted to sue the EU in Belgian court under a special section of the Belgian Code des sociétés, alleging that the Community de facto ran the company and was guilty of serious misconduct. However, this provious obviously does not transform the case into a contractual matter, so the ECJ continues to have sole jurisdiction. Hanssens-Ensch v. European Community.

In Commissioners for HM Revenue and Customs v. Isaac, the defendant got himself in a bit of trouble regarding the importation of bycicle parts from China, and particularly the payment (or rather: non-payment) of anti-dumping duties on these parts. The Third Chamber declines to help him out, either on the grounds that the parts in question are immediately sent to Germany, nor on the grounds that qualified for an exemption under art. 212a of the Customs Code.

Finally, there is Commission v. Italy, where Italy is found to have neglected to enact adequate legislation to implementRegulation 273/2004 and Regulation 111/2005 on drug precursors and the monitoring of their trade, respectively. This begs a simple question, of course: Since when do Regulations have to be transposed? Commission v. Italy (FR)