Opinion of the Advocate General — ECLI:EU:C:1997:190
Date: 1997-04-15
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Agriculture and Fisheries;Oils and fats
Procedure: Action for annulment - unfounded
Origin: Portugal

Summary of the Judgmen t 
Agriculture — Common organization of the markets — Oils and fats — Compensatory pay­
ments for oil seeds — Member State benefiting from special transitional arrangements following 
its accession — Reduction of the final regional reference amounts — Overshoot of the maximum 
guaranteed area — Method of calculation — Exclusion from the system of compensatory adjust­
ments for overshoots — Discrimination against producers in the Member State — None 
(Act of Accession 1985, Art. 294; Council ReguLtion No 1765/92, Art. 5(l)(e) and (f) and 
Annex IV, as amended by Reguhtion No 232/94; Commission Reguhtion No 307/95) 
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SUMMARY — CASE C-150/95 
Regulation No 307/95 which, in the context 
of implementation of the support system for 
producers of certain arable crops, establishes 
corrected final regional reference amounts 
for producers of soya beans, rape seed, colza 
seed and sunflower seed for the 1994/95 
marketing year, is not, inasmuch as it reduces 
by 20% the final regional reference amounts 
for sunflower seeds produced in Portugal, 
unlawful in the light of Regulation No 
1765/92 establishing that support system, as 
amended by Regulation N o 232/94 imple­
menting the agreement on oil seeds con­
cluded by the Community with the United 
States of America within the framework of 
the GATT. 
The reduction in question corresponds to the 
percentage by which the maximum guaran­
teed area set for Portuguese sunflower seed 
production in the 1994/95 marketing year 
and used as a basis for calculating crop-
specific oil seed payments was exceeded. In 
that regard, Regulation No 307/95 correctly 
takes as a basis the establishment of the 
maximum guaranteed area allocated to Por­
tugal, which takes account of the reduction 
in area laid down by Article 5(1 )(e) of Regu­
lation No 1765/92 without creating an 
exception for the area applicable to Portu­
guese sunflower seed producers set out in 
Annex IV to that regulation, and which also 
takes account of the area farmed by small 
Portuguese producers covered by a simpli­
fied scheme of compensation payments 
under Regulation N o 1765/92, both for the 
purpose of including that area in the total 
area farmed in Portugal when assessing the 
extent to which the maximum guaranteed 
area was exceeded and for the purpose of 
applying the reduction laid down by Article 
5(1 )(e) likewise to the area farmed by those 
producers because they, like producers fall­
ing within the general scheme, are subject to 
the discipline of maximum guaranteed areas. 
Moreover, that calculation of the maximum 
guaranteed area applicable to Portuguese 
sunflower seed producers complies with the 
special transitional arrangements from which 
those producers benefited pursuant to 
Article 294 of the Act of Accession, inas­
much as that provision does not exclude the 
alteration of the specific guarantee thresholds 
set for that State, and also with the above-
mentioned international agreement inasmuch 
as that agreement seeks to reduce oil seed 
subsidies throughout the Community. 
Furthermore, the Commission was entitled 
to establish, by Regulation N o 307/95, the 
size and the distribution of the reductions of 
the final regional reference amounts to be 
applied, following the overshoots of the 
maximum guaranteed areas recorded for the 
various Member States in the 1994/95 mar­
keting year, in such a way as to exclude Por­
tuguese sunflower seed cultivation from 
compensatory adjustment of the overshoot 
by the transfer of unutilized areas of land 
within the maximum guaranteed area in the 
other Member States. 
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PORTUGAL v COMMISSION 
First, the method of compensatory adjust­
ment used in Regulation N o 307/95 pursuant 
to Article 5(l)(f) of Regulation No 1765/92 
ensured equality between the weighted aver­
age reduction for each of the separate catego­
ries of maximum guaranteed area — includ­
ing that allocated to Portugal for sunflower 
seed cultivation — and the percentage by 
which their respective maximum guaranteed 
areas were exceeded; secondly, the exclusion 
of Portuguese sunflower seed producers 
from the system of compensatory payments 
cannot be regarded as discriminatory, 
because they were not in a position compa­
rable to that of the other producers in the 
Community in that, under the Act of Acces­
sion, Portuguese producers continued to 
benefit from special arrangements involving 
the setting of a specific maximum guaranteed 
area which were intended to ensure that they 
enjoyed some security of income, irrespec­
tive of developments recorded in the other 
Member States. 
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