classification of mobilty scooters
The European Court of Justice decided that mobilty scooters must be classified in heading 8703. In 2006 the Dutch Customs Court had also decided that the correct heading is 8703, but then in 2008 the Amsterdam Court of Appeal decided that the mobility scooters should go in 8713, as the importer had argued. The Court more or less said, that you had to be disabled, to actually want to use such a mobility scooter. Then in 2009 the German Court of Düsseldorf was asked to decide on the classification of mobility scooters as well, and decided to refer the matter to the ECJ. Last month the ECJ decided that such mobility scooters were to be classified in 8703. One of main arguments was that mobility scooters were not necessarily used by disabled people. That is nonsense of course, that is the whole point of the scooter. It is to increase mobility(!). Also, I don’t necessarily need to be disabled to use a scooter of heading 8713 do I ? It is a pitty the Court didn’t go into the meaning of the wordt disabled. Perphaps that will come up again in another case.