| Cassis de Dijon | ||||||
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European Court of Justice |
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| Submitted May 22 1978 Decided February 20 1979 |
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| Full case name | Rewe-Zentral AG v Bundesmonopolverwaltung für Branntwein. | |||||
| Case number | 120/78 | |||||
| Chamber | Full court | |||||
| Nationality of parties | Germany | |||||
| Court composition | ||||||
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| Legislation affecting | ||||||
| Article 28 EC | ||||||
| Keywords | ||||||
| Measures having equivalent effect | ||||||
Rewe-Zentral AG v Bundesmonopolverwaltung für Branntwein (C-120-78), also known as the Cassis de Dijon case is a decision of the European Court of Justice ("ECJ"), in which a regulation applying both to imports and to domestic goods (an "indistinctly applicable measure") that produces an effect equivalent to a quantitative import restriction was held to be an unlawful restriction on the free movement of goods. This would be the case even if the rule merely prescribed certain ingredients in a product.
Contents |
The case concerned the sale of "cassis de Dijon" (a type of crème de cassis) in Germany by an importer and retailer (Rewe). Crème de cassis is a blackcurrant liqueur produced in France containing 15% to 20% alcohol by volume. The German government had a law stipulating that products sold as fruit liqueur should contain not less than 25% alcohol by volume. Therefore, the Bundesmonopolverwaltung für Branntwein (a section of the German Federal Ministry of Finance) told Rewe that the cassis de Dijon could not be imported into Germany and marketed as a fruit liqueur. The importer argued that this represented a quantitative restriction on trade in breach of article 28 of the Treaty of Rome.
The ECJ held that the German legislation represented a measure having an effect equivalent to a quantitative restriction on imports, and that the law was in breach of article 28 of the Treaty. The court stated:
| “ | The concept of measures having an effect equivalent to quantitative restrictions on imports contained in article 30 [now 28] of the EEC treaty is to be understood to mean that the fixing of a minimum alcohol content for alcoholic beverages intended for human consumption by the legislation of a member state also falls within the prohibition laid down in that provision where the importation of alcoholic beverages lawfully produced and marketed in another member state is concerned. | ” |
The major outcome of this case is the principle of mutual recognition: the court held that there are no valid reasons why a product that is lawfully marketed in one member state should not be introduced in another member state. To soften this wide opening of the gates for intra-Community trading, the court went on to provide four mandatory requirements which might be accepted as necessary for restricting trading in addition to the fixed derogations of TFEU Art. 36 of the Lisbon Treaty:
| “ | ...the effectiveness of fiscal supervision, the protection of public health, the fairness of commercial transactions, and the defence of the consumer. | ” |
Article 34 TFEU
In 2010, Switzerland unilaterally adopted the Cassis-de-Dijon principle: Generally, goods that can be lawfully produced or marketed according to standards applying in the European Union can also be lawfully produced or marketed in Switzerland or imported from the EU into Switzerland[1].