3.

Secondiv, the plaintiff submits that Ankle 9 of'Regulation No 1837/80 has introduced what amounts to a charge having an effect equivalent to customs duties, contrary to Anieles 9, 12, 13 and 16 of the EEC Treaty. Counsel for Kind found suppon for this submission in the judgment of this Coun of 20 April 1978 (Joined Cases 80 and 81/77 Les Commissionnaires Réunis v Receveur des Douanes, [1978] ECR 927). The question at issue in those cases was whether a Community provision authorizing wineproducing Member States to introduce and levy on intra-Community trade in wine charges having an effect equivalent to customs duties was compatible with Article 13 of the EEC Treaty, which provides for the abolition by the end of the transitional period of charges having an effect equivalent to customs duties on imports. The Court rightly held that the elimination between Member States of customs duties and charges having equivalent effect was the subject of a fundamental principle of the common market to which no exceptions had been permitted. However, reference to that precedent provides no suppon tor the applicant's argument: in the cases decided by the judgment cited above the issue concerned payment of a French impon charge on table wine (or wines suitable for making table wine); the charge had been introduced, as I said, on the basis of a Community provision authorizing it. In our case, however, we are concerned with nothing more than a mechanism for recovering, at the moment of exportation, Community aid which had been paid to producers and which was intended to be a subsidy designed to operate exclusively on the internal market in the State in question. The export levy is strictly dependent, in fact, on the character of the slaughter premium. Since the latter is intended to maintain price stability in a given market it is necessary to prevent its effects from spreading outside that market, and therefore the amount already collected is recovered when the mutton and lamb leaves the territory of the State concerned. The mechanism merely operates, therefore, to restore prices to their usual level as far as external trade is concerned and to restrict the effects of the intervention measures to the internal market. Even if the argument attributing to the levy in question the character of a charge having an effect equivalent to a customs duty were accepted, I think none the less that the complaints in question would prove to be equally unfounded. The truth is, as we know, that the Community is not considered by the Court to be liable for the consequences of a legislative measure which, as in this instance, involves choices of economic policy unless a sufficiently serious breach of a superior rule of law for the protection of the individual has occurred (see, in particular, the ludgment of 25 May 1978 in Joined Cases 83 and 94/76, 4 15 and 40/77 Bayerische HSL Vermehrungsbetnebe and Others [1978] ECR 1209). That was recently confirmed by the Court when it stated (in its judgment of 4 October 1979 in Case 238/78 Ireks-Arkady [1979] ECR 2955, in particular at paragraph 9 of the decision) that “in the context of Community provisions in which one of the chief features was the exercise of a wide discretion essential for the implementation of the common agricultural policy, the Community did not incur liability unless the institution concerned manifestly and gravely disregarded the limits on the exercise of its powers”. However, there is certainly no reason in this case to conclude that the measure with which we are concerned was a seriously arbitrary one. The introduction of the export levy provided for in Article 9 of Regulation No 1837/80 was in any case a decision which was justified by objective cirumstances and fell within the discretionary area of economic policy. I need only mention what was pointed out by the Commission's representative, in particular, in regard to the requirements which led both to the introduction of the slaughter premium and the recovery of an equivalent amount in the case of export. The special position of the United Kingdom (which is both the major producer and the major consumer of mutton and lamb) was of decisive importance in this respect. Prior to the creation of the common organization of the market in the sector in question producers in the United Kingdom enjoyed a government subsidy of an amount equal to the difference between the market price and a price fixed by the administration. That system, which was known as the “deficiency payments” scheme, was intended to keep prices on the domestic market at a relatively low level but operated at the same time as an aid to exports inasmuch as the subsidy was also paid for meat produced in the United Kingdom and subsequently exponed. When the system was replaced by the common organization of the market the slaughter premium of which I have spoken was substituted for the deficiency payment because it was necessary to avoid any sudden substantial rise in prices on the domestic market with a consequent reduction both in consumption and in imports from nonmember countries. In that respect it should be noted, too, that any significant reduction in imports from nonmember countries would have also created problems within the framework of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, since it might have called in question the agreements which had been concluded concerning the level of customs duties levied upon entry into the Community. In view of the circumstances in which the slaughter premium was introduced it is thus clear that this is not an arbitrary measure and that even its restriction to the domestic market of the Member State making payment was not arbitrary in nature; the restriction was guaranteed, as I have said, by the mechanism of the expon levy. It is therefore clearly not correct, in the case of Article 9 of Regulation No 1837/8C, to speak of a serious breach of a superior rule of Community law. That provision was in fact the result of a choice of economic policy justified by obiective market conditions and above all by the market in the United Kingdom in the sector of mutton and lamb.