Dropsafe

by Alec Muffett

EU alcohol ruling cheers traders

Boo.

BBC News

Retailers have expressed relief at a European Court ruling against allowing consumers to buy drinks and cigarettes online at lower duties from abroad.

The decision means shoppers buying cheaper goods abroad will still have to accompany the goods back themselves.

Shopkeepers said a different ruling allowing an internet bargain hunt would have hit them hard, while the Treasury said it was a victory for common sense.

The UK already loses duty of more than ?1bn per year owing to “booze cruises”.

And it would have lost a lot more if the ruling had gone the other way and more shoppers had turned to buying low-duty goods online.

“This clear win for the government is a victory for commonsense,” said a Treasury source.

(etc…)

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Comments

3 responses to “EU alcohol ruling cheers traders”

  1. Robin Wilton
    re: EU alcohol ruling cheers traders

    Well, quite…

    And there I was thinking that the EU was supposed to be a trade zone free of artificial traiffs and restrictions on the cross-border flow of goods and services. Perhaps I’m very old-fashioned.

    Presumably this even applies amongst Schengen countries?

    Reply
  2. Robin Wilton
    re: EU alcohol ruling cheers traders

    *tariffs, even.

    Reply
  3. Dave Walker
    re: EU alcohol ruling cheers traders

    Oh, indeed it does – the test case involved Dutch buyers of French wines, and both France and the Netherlands are Schengen treaty signatories.

    It’s worth adding that, in an example of classic Brit-awkwardness, we are signed-up to some clauses of the Schengen treaty, but not others. A close look at the clauses we signed, versus those we didn’t, about cross-border policing can be quite amusing…

    Reply

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