Opinion of the Advocate General — ECLI:EU:C:2008:615
Date: 2008-11-06
Language of the case: French
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Environment;Pollution
Procedure: Reference for a preliminary ruling
Origin: France

summary of the BREF document produced before the Court by ANPER-TOS. 19 – This document may be consulted on the internet at the following address: http://eippcb.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pages/FActivities.htm. 20 – COM(2007) 844 final. 21 – In addition, it should be noted that that proposal is currently the subject of a first reading before the European Parliament, with respect to which the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety submitted a proposal for amendments relating in particular to subheading 6.6(a) of Annex I to Directive 96/61 (see the draft report of the European Parliament Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, 2007/0286 (COD) 2 July 2008, pp. 39 and 40). 22 – See, for example the definition given in Le Grand Robert de la langue française, cited above. 23 – That is the case with respect to the versions of the text in Danish (‘pladser’), German (‘Plätzen’), English (‘places’), Italian (‘posti’), Dutch (‘plaatsen’), Finnish (‘paikkaa’) and Swedish (‘platser’). The Spanish version uses the word ‘emplazamientos’, while the Portuguese version is unspecific. 24 – Official Gazette of the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Planning of 30 October 2007, MEDAD 2007/20, Text 15, p. 1. It should be noted that, although this circular was adopted several months after the action for annulment had been brought before the Conseil d’État in the case in the main proceedings, it is none the less based on data from studies carried out in 2006 by the ‘Poultry’ group of the Steering Committee for Environmentally Friendly Agricultural Practices (Corpen) acting under the auspices of the French Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Planning, as stated in the circular and established by the documents produced before the Court by ANPER-TOS. 25 – See the data in Table A, entitled ‘Quantities of controllable elements produced after deduction of losses at the installation or in storage (in grams per animal, except copper and zinc in milligrams)’, annexed to that circular. 26 – For the sake of completeness, it should be pointed out that the applicant and intervening associations in the main proceedings have also indicated, in their written observations to the Court, that the waste materials contain phosphorus, copper and zinc, that substance and those metals also being set out in the tables drawn up by Corpen and annexed to the abovementioned ministerial circular. On the basis of the data in those tables, the amount of phosphorus, copper and zinc excreted by 240 000 quails, 120 000 partridges or 120 000 pigeons is more, indeed sometimes substantially more, than that contained in the excrement of 40 000 standard chickens.