Monday, May 10, 2010
THOSE who claim issues like the EU internal market rules and the single market policy are boring and just for sad bureaucrats should think again.
The future of the tourist trail in the Netherlands and its inclusion of the country’s famous coffee shops is resting on such fusty legislation.
Coffee shop owners, Dutch lawyers and European Commission experts are all arguing about the shops’ principle commodity – cannabis.
The town of Maastricht created a problem for one of the basic laws on which the EU is founded when trying to limit the number of drug addicts, dealers and drug tourists it was attracting.
The town is very close to the borders of Belgium and Germany, and not too arduous a trip from France, and as a result was proving to be very popular with visitors looking for the drug.
But it got too much for the town’s authorities who introduced a bylaw banning all but Dutch nationals from the town’s coffee shops.
Given that 70% of their clientele are foreigners, this must have been tough on the shop owners and they were not happy to enforce it. One such owner, Marc Josemans, owns the Easy Going coffee shop in the town, and when police discovered two non-nationals on his premises they brought him to court.
But they put off dealing with the obvious guilt of the shop owner when questions were raised about the legality of the bylaw itself, and the matter was referred to European Court of Justice.
The question is if a law that applies only to customers from outside the country – whether they be EU nationals are not – is compatible with the EU’s internal market that seeks to rid the union of all discrimination when it comes to trading goods and services.
Normally the answer would be no – you have to keep a level playing field. But not necessarily in this case, because we are dealing with cannabis and the Netherlands has its own, quite unique, way of regulating it that sounds surprisingly like an Irish-type of solution.
They have decriminalised the use of cannabis but they have not legalised it. But there are rules about selling cannabis – it can only be done through licensed coffee shops, it cannot be advertised or sold to those underage, and of course because it is not legal, they do not pay VAT on it.
The judges hearing the case last week threatened to unravel the expertly put together policy that allows the Netherlands to be the only country in the region where it is not legal but not a crime to sell. They asked questions many would prefer they did not, such as who supplied the drugs to the shops, and if the sale was technically illegal how could anybody claim to regulate it.
The Easy Going coffee shop owner’s lawyers concentrated on the basic issue at hand for them – money.
It and Maastricht’s 13 other such shops expect to sell €10 million worth of cannabis this year compared to €0.5m selling coffees.
They pay the state corporation tax on their profits and all the usual payments to cover their staff. And, they claimed, it indirectly contributed €140m to the state’s coffers and more than 1,000 jobs depend on it.
Nobody suggested the judges test the product for themselves while they grapple with the surreal issue of applying free trade laws to a product that is permitted but not quite legal.
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