Question:
Claude owns a bakery in Belgium, located near the French border. He wishes to import dried apricots from Turkey for a new range of buns but is being charged 3 euros per box at the border. A friend who owns a bakery in Germany tells him that he is only charged 2 euros when he imports the same dried apricots.
He also imports coarse stoneground flour from Ireland but has just been informed that there may be a problem with tiny insects, known as weevils, getting into the flour at the mills. As a precaution the Belgian authorities have decided to start inspecting the flour at the port of Ostend where it arrives, and Claude will be charged 10 euros per tonne for the inspection. As these inspections may take up to a week (the insects being particularly small and hard to detect), he will have to store the flour sacks in a warehouse in Ostend, at a charge of 5 euros per tonne per night.
A group of militant French bakers, angry at the increasing volume of imported bakery products being sold in French shops, has launched a campaign of direct action. The group recently halted one of Claude's vans in France and threw its entire load into a nearby river. French police officers who witnessed the event refused to intervene or to arrest any of those involved. The French police have since issued a statement saying that intervention would have provoked an escalation of the violence and led to increased damage to property.
Claude's Belgian Buns are one of his most popular lines with French consumers, but he believes that the volume of buns he can export to France is limited because of a French rule requiring bakeries to close between 1pm and 4pm.
After much thought, Claude has decided to buy a small specialist chocolate business in the neighbouring town. As Belgian chocolates have an excellent reputation as luxury goods, he designs and pays for an advertising campaign with the theme Belgian chocolates are real chocolates. His local Chamber of Commerce (run by the Mayor of the town) approves of the campaign and has paid for the newspaper advertisements.
Advise Claude as to the legal issues raised in each of the five paragraphs.