1.

With regard to the first question I would again recall that Article 3 of Regulation No 1196/71 lays down that a claim for a carry-over payment was to be made by letter etc., despatched on 7 August 1971 at the latest, containing details of quantities of cereals held by the claimant on 31 July 1971. Bearing in mind the fact that only after 31 July did it become possible to determine the quantities concerned and that only from that date was it possible to submit claims, it is clear, from the above and from the fixing of a final date for the despatch of claims, that the provision contained in Article 3 — last indentation — lays down a limited, clearly specified interval of time, within the meaning of German law (cf. Palandt, Kommentar zum Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuch', 32nd Edition, Note 1 to paragraph 186), that is to say, a period. Furthermore, reference can be made to decided cases involving corresponding Regulations from previous years, in particular to the Judgments in Cases 32/72 and 52/72, which specifically refer to periods of limitation. The above considerations, however, do not answer the question fully. The referring court wishes to know whether Article 3 of Regulation No 1196/71 involves a period within the meaning of Article 3 of Regulation No 1182/71 of the Council, determining the rules applicable to periods, dates and time limits. Regulation No 1182/71 does not contain any particular, generally applicable definition of the concept ‘period’. It is — for the purposes of this case — concerned only with a period measured in days and whose beginning and end are determined by detailed rules contained in Article 3 (1), second paragraph, and in Article 3 (2), (b). At the most Article 3 (4), second paragraph, is relevant to the establishment of a definition to the extent that it provides that the first paragraph does not apply to certain periods, which can only mean that such periods are not periods within the meaning of Article 3 (the point raised in the questions referred by the national court). As I have already mentioned, these are periods calculated retroactively from a given date or event. It is of course clear from the wording of this provision that it does not cover cases such as those governed by Article 3 of Regulation 1196/71, since there is no mention of a computed period in that Regulation. Moreover the period did not have to be calculated retroactively from a given day; the initial date of the period was fixed, independently of its closing date, by the fact that stocks on hand on 31 July had to be notified in the claim. Thus, if Article 3 of Regulation No 1182/71 alone is taken into consideration, there appears to be nothing to prevent its application to the period contained in Article 3 of Regulation No 1196/71. However, even if it is established that Article 3 of Regulation No 1196/71 is concerned with a period, the application of Regulation No 1182/71 may be excluded on other grounds. This is made clear by Article 1 of that Regulation, which states: ‘Save as otherwise provided, this Regulation shall apply …’ The Commission remarked upon this in its written observations and in fact seemed to be of the opinion that Regulation No 1196/71 is an exceptional provision, to which the basic Regulation on periods cannot be applied. It should be noted here that one could assume that the fixing of a calendar date as the closing date for despatch of claims in Regulation No 1196/71 excludes all recourse to the rule contained in Article 3 (4), first paragraph, of Regulation No 1182/71. However, this cannot be taken as a general principle, in the sense that such cases are basically not covered by Regulation No 1182/71. Two important factors support this view. The first concerns the Commission's draft of the Regulation determining the rules for periods, submitted to the Council in the form of a draft Regulation on 27 July 1969, and published in the Official Journal of 22 August 1969 (OJ C 108, 22. 8.1969, p. 10). It states, at Article 2, that periods ‘expressed in terms of a given calendar period or any other fixed period of time’ are not periods within the meaning of the above Regulation. This proposal was not incorporated into the Council Regulation which can only lead to the conclusion that it was the intention of the Community legislators to include also those periods mentioned in the draft within the ambit of Regulation No 1182/71. The second factor is that the Regulation determining the rules for periods itself shows, at Article 4 (1) and (3), that the Council was aware of the problem of the fixed closing date but that it excluded from the ambit of Article 3 (4) only those acts of the Council or the Commission whose expiry of validity, termination of effect or cessation of application fall on a given date. In effect this discounts the hypothesis that a period the last day of which is expressed as a calendar date is not in general covered by Regulation No 1182/71. Therefore we should perhaps consider whether there results from the substance and objectives of Regulation No 1196/71 a requirement that the closing date of the period, as stated in Article 3, has to be observed at all costs, and whether Article 3 (4) of Regulation No 1182/71 is for this reason inapplicable. It should be noted in this connexion that this solution is supported by considerations derived from previous Judgments of the Court, according to which the rapid submission of claims is necessary because the checks required in order to preclude abuse of the system must be made without delay. On the other hand it should be borne in mind that previously the corresponding periods (fixed by Regulations Nos 602/68 (OJ L 114/68). 963/69 (OJ L 126/69), 1151/70 (OJ L 134/70)) were consistently shorter (the closing date of each being 5 August), which could lead one to conclude from the extension made by Regulation No 1196/71 that one or more days more or less are of no great consequence. Moreover — and this is still more important — account should be taken of the fact that when on 8 June 1971, only a few days after the publication on 3 June 1971 by the Commission of Regulation No 1182/71 determining the rules applicable to periods, a Regulation containing a time limit was published, it must be assumed that the Commission, had it envisaged a derogation from the basic Regulation on periods, would have made this abundantly clear. It is my opinion that in the interest of legal clarity, to which the Regulation determining the rules applicable to periods should contribute, this argument cannot be denied. The concept of an implicit exclusion of Regulation No 1182/71 must be approached with extreme caution — as the Commission itself admitted during the course of the oral proceedings. Since in this case, as has been demonstrated, it is not entirely clear that the state of the parties' interests under Regulation No 1196/71 demands strict compliance with the closing date of 7 August 1971, it must be concluded that Regulation No 1182/71 did not implicitly derogate from Regulation No 1196/71. Thus the first question put by the referring court can only be answered to the effect that the provision contained at Article 3 — last indentation — of Regulation No 1196/71 lays down a period within the meaning of Article 3 of Regulation No 1182/71.