Brussels, 24/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - According to Advocate General Henrik Saugmandsgaard Oe, addressing the European Court of Justice on Thursday 21 April, the obligation laid down by a decree of the Flemish Community requiring cross-border invoices to be drawn up exclusively in Dutch, failing which they are to be declared null and void, infringes EU law.
It is in those circumstances that the Rechtbank van Koophandel te Gent (Commercial Court, Ghent, Belgium) referred a question to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling on whether the obligation included in the decree by the Flemish Community requiring cross-border invoices to be drawn up exclusively in Dutch, failing which they are to be declared null and void, infringed EU law, particularly the rules on the free movement of goods.
In his conclusions, the Advocate General argued that the decree infringed European law because it has a dissuasive effect with regard to intra-Community trade because the addressee of such an invoice will encounter difficulties in understanding it quickly and that the two companies or trade partners should be free to draft invoices in a language that they both jointly master.
The aim of the decree is to promote the Dutch language and facilitate controls. This could also be done by demanding that a translation in Dutch is carried out, even a posteriori, into Dutch. According to the Advocate General, making invoices drafted in another language numb and void "appears to go beyond what is strictly necessary". (Original version in French by Jan Kordys)