The United Kingdom will have to amend its law on granting licences for service activities because the current fee demanded is too high and does not correspond to the real cost of authorisation procedures, explained the European Court of Justice on Wednesday 16 November (C-316/15).
The amounts involved for those who wish to pursue their service activities or set up in the United Kingdom are not negligible. For the year 2011-12, the total fee was £29,102 (approximately €37,700), of which £2,667 (approximately €3,455) was allocated to the administration of the application, while the remaining £26,435 (approximately €34,245) related to the management of the licensing regime (that amount being refundable if the application was refused).
This amount was judged unreasonable by users of sex shops in Westminster, who succeeded in bringing the case to the supreme Court in the United Kingdom. The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom asks the European Court of Justice whether the second part of the fee constitutes, for a licence applicant, a charge contrary to the Services Directive (2006/123/CE), in so far as the amount of that fee exceeds any cost of processing the application.
In its ruling, the Court confirmed that it did indeed involve a charge, the amount of which should not exceed the cost of the processing the procedure in question. Furthermore, it largely exceeds the cost because it takes into account expenses relating to the general activity of monitoring carried out by the competent authority, which should not occur, according to the European judges. They therefore concluded British legislation was incompatible with the European directive because it banned compulsory fees which are partly composed of the costs for managing the authorisation process, even though this part can be refunded in the event of the request of being rejected. (Original version in French by Jan Kordys)