Keywords

Summary



Keywords

1 Community law - Principles - Protection of legitimate expectations - Limits - Amendments to rules concerning a common organisation of the market - Discretionary power of the institutions

2 Agriculture - Common organisation of the markets - Raw tobacco - System of prices and premiums - Determination, for a given variety, of the prices and premium for the 1991 harvest after sowing of the crop - Principle of the protection of legitimate expectations - Infringement - None

(Council Regulations Nos 727/70, 1114/88, 1329/90 and 1738/91)

3 Agriculture - Common organisation of the markets - Discrimination between producers or consumers - Determination of prices and premiums in the raw tobacco sector - Difference of treatment according to different varieties of tobacco - No discrimination

(EC Treaty, Art. 40(3), second subpara.; Council Regulation No 1738/91)

Summary

1 Whilst the protection of legitimate expectations is one of the fundamental principles of the Community, traders cannot have a legitimate expectation that an existing situation which is capable of being altered by the Community institutions in the exercise of their discretionary power will be maintained; this is particularly true in an area such as the common organisation of the markets whose purpose involves constant adjustments to meet changes in the economic situation. It follows that traders cannot claim a vested right to the maintenance of an advantage which they derive from the establishment of the common organisation of the markets and which they enjoyed at a given time.

2 The fact that, in the context of the common organisation of the market in raw tobacco, the prices and processing premium for the Burley I variety for the 1991 harvest were reduced, as compared with the previous year, by Regulation No 1738/91, published on a date when the planters of that variety had already taken their decisions concerning the 1991 harvest, does not constitute a breach of the principle of the protection of legitimate expectations. The traders concerned were not entitled to expect the prices and premium in question to be maintained at a particular level, since Regulation No 727/70, which required the Council to determine each year, having regard in particular to market developments and to the harmfulness of the different varieties of tobacco, the prices and premiums for such varieties, expressly provided for the possibility of a reduction in those prices and premiums. The same traders should also have expected, since the publication of Regulations Nos 1114/88 and 1329/90, a second reduction in the prices and premiums thus determined, in proportion to any possible overrun of the maximum guaranteed quantity.

3 The principle of non-discrimination does not preclude Community rules which, for the purpose of fixing prices and premiums in the raw tobacco sector, reserve for producers of the Burley I tobacco variety treatment which is different and, possibly, less favourable than for producers of other varieties of tobacco. The attainment of the objectives pursued by the system of prices and premiums in that sector, in particular the orientation of tobacco production towards the varieties which are most in demand, most competitive and the least harmful to health, necessarily involves the adoption of measures which differ according to the varieties in question.