4.

Case 64/69 concerns a problem of admissibility in relation to the provision of Article 2 of Regulation No 1660/69 which entered into force with retroactive effect. As the. Cour t is aware, according to this provision, the compensatory amount payable on exports to third countries under contracts concluded before 11 August 1969 and payable in French francs can only be reduced if, where the assessment of the amount of refund may be fixed in advance, use has been made of this opportunity. If we ask ourselves how to characterize this provision the answer is not so clear as in the cases with which we have been concerned up to now. The Commission has declared on this point that it is a transitional provision and that it must therefore be admitted that it partakes of the character of the provisions whose application it governs. Furthermore, this provision operates as a limitation on an exception to the general rule, so that we can say that the general rule itself, namely the imposition on French exports of compensatory amounts, is brought into question. At first sight this understanding of the matter appears to me absolutely convincing. In fact it is possible to endorse the view that the applicant's complaint is directed against the general rules more precisely because it maintains that it was wrongly excluded from the transitional rules of Article 2 of Regulation No 1660/69. However, I now doubt whether such an argument is tenable, and that is why I prefer not to judge the question of admissibility in Case 64/69 solely on the basis of considerations relating to the legal nature of the contested measure. If, as the applicants think, emphasis is to be laid on the rules contained in Regulation No 1660/69 and the fact that the exceptions it makes are insufficient because they do not encompass the contracts concluded by the applicant, then it is difficult to speak of a legislative measure in view of the fact that the measure is exclusively concerned with the past. In fact, the measure relates only to certain matters situated in the past, namely export contracts concluded with traders from third countries before 11 August 1969, and which, moreover, as required by Article 2 (2) of the regulation, were registered with the French authorities before 18 August 1969. It can therefore be said with certainty that this measure concerns only a limited category of ascertainable persons concerned. From the point of view of administrative law, the measure can consequently be considered as a general act (‘Allgemeinverfügung’ in German law). However, since according to the principles of case-law developed by this Court the essential element in the concept of a regulation is not only its general validity, but the fact that it refers to a category of persons viewed in an abstract manner and not identifiable at the time of its issue, it is in my opinion impossible, having regard to the legal nature, of the measure in question in Case 64/69, to say that it cannot be the subject of an application for annulment. Thus, as I have already indicated, the examination should be extended to the question whether the applicant, whose contracts are not covered by Regulation No 1660/69, is able to maintain that it is individually concerned. To tell the truth it is not easy to formulate a reply to that question either, since the criteria developed in the case-law are somewhat sparse. First of all, we can begin with the fact that it is possible to speak of an individual interest not only when one person is adversely affected. However, where there are severa-interested parties it is certainly more diffil cult to say where the line must be drawn beyond which it is no longer possible to say that the quantitative point of view cannot be ignored. The judgment in Cases 106 and 107/63 in which the application was declared admissible appears to me to favour that point of view, for those cases were concerned with a small and easily ascertainable number of German importers of a particular product, to which a retroactive measure of the Commission applied. It seems to me that that is also what is envisaged by the reference employed in the definition given by the Court of Justice, and according to which, in order to speak of an individual interest, the party concerned must be distinguished just as in the case of the person addressed by the decision (Cases 106 and 107/63 [1965-I] E.C.R. p. 442, Case 6/68, Rec. 1968, p. 606). It is, nevertheless, difficult to say whether this applies in the present case. The applicant has already referred to a whole series of contracts which it concluded before 11 August 1969, and to which in its estimation Regulation No 1660/69 ought to have been extended. It was said in the course of the oral proceedings that 50 other companies in France export flour. It must be noted, moreover, that the possibility of fixing in advance the amounts of refunds, which is referred to in the second paragraph of Article 2 (1) (a) of Regulation No 1660/69, applies to a whole series of further products. These the Commission has set out in detail in page 8 of its interlocutory application, and has thus clearly illustrated the general economic scope of the provisions criticized (to use an expression employed in Case 1/64 [1964] E.C.R. 417) and the extent of the category of persons affected by Regulation No 1660/69. In fact, it is difficult to conceive that individual decisions could have been addressed to them all. Not only would this be a difficult feat from the point of view of administrative practicability but, more significantly, it would be most uncommon as a matter of legislative practice. Basing my argument on those considerations and on the proposition that the contested measure is not of a legislative nature, it follows, bearing in mind the formula employed in Case 25/62 [1963] E.C.R. 107, that the applicant cannot say that it is individually concerned. This means that the application in Case 64/69 must also be dismissed as inadmissible.