4.

As the present case is also concerned with imports from Senegal, a State associated with the Community, the third question asks the Court to determine whether the concept of charges having an effect equivalent to customs duties referred to in Article 2 (1) of the Conventions of Association between the Community and the African States and Madagascar, signed at Yaoundé on 20 July 1963 and on 29 July 1969, has exactly the same mandatory effect as that of the corresponding concept in Article 13 of the EEC Treaty. The Court has already declared that, by virtue of Article 177, it has jurisdiction to rule on questions concerning the interpretation of international conventions which the Community has concluded under Article 228 of the Treaty. This is, by implication, the conclusion to be drawn from the Court's judgment of 7 February 1973(Schroeder, Case 40/72, [1973] ECR 125) and, expressly, from the judgment of 30 April 1974 (Case 181/73, Haegeman, [1974] ECR 459). This finding has given rise to doubts in so far as the preliminary ruling given by the Court on the interpretation of the Convention has been extended further than the cases in which it was given in the course of interpreting or reviewing the validity of a Community act. Nevertheless I am of the opinion that, when a national court has to determine whether an act or the conduct of a Member State is consistent with obligations assumed by the Community under an international convention, which, under Article 228 (2) of the EEC Treaty, is also binding on every Member State, it is quite in order, indeed necessary, at the same time to take the Convention into account in order to identify the State's Community obligation, which is based on the Treaty and is specifically defined in the Convention binding the Community. It is true that the convention is of necessity a bilateral or multilateral legal instrument and, as such, does not lend itself to identification with the acts of the Community executive, which are inherently unilateral. Nevertheless, the definition of the scope of a State's Community obligation is always a question of interpreting Community law and it is, therefore, not necessary to base the Court's jurisdiction to give a preliminary ruling in such circumstances on the assimilation of the international convention to an act of a Community institution. In view of this, the reference made by the Court, in the abovequoted judgment in Haegeman, to a Community act and. its relationship to international conventions concluded by the Community under Article 228, may be taken to mean that, as against those subject to the legal system of the Community, an international agreement is valid not in itself as a term of an agreement effective under international law but as a result of an act of the Community executive. Against this background I now come to the substance of the third question referred by the Italian Court. The first comment to be made is that, despite differences of form and the changed conditions in the countries which have attained independence, there is a substantial degree of continuity between the two Yaoundé Conventions as regards the system of association which was originally established, unilaterally, with the Overseas Countries and Territories by the EEC Treaty through the appropriate Implementing Convention annexed to the Treaty and to which there is a reference in Article 136. For a definition of the subject-matter of the provisions of the two Yaoundé conventions with which we are concerned I must point out that Article 2 (1) of the first convention expressly refers to the corresponding provisions of the Treaty of Rome (Article 12 et seq.). Article 2 (1) provides as follows: 'Goods originating in Associated States shall, when imported into Member States, benefit from the progressive abolition of customs duties and charges having an effect equivalent to such duties, resulting, between Member States under the provisions of Articles 12, 13, 14, 15 and 17 of the Treaty and the decisions which have been or may be adopted to accelerate the rate of achieving the aims of the Treaty. It is clear from the wording of that provision that the meaning which it attaches to the concept of charges having equivalent effect is the same as that in the abovementioned provisions of the Treaty although in the Community's international relationships, which are the subject of the article, it is not possible to read into the provision all the implications which affect relationships within the common market and which are justified only on the basis of the process of integration which the EEC Treaty has established between Member States. There is no reason for believing that it was intended to mean anything different in the second convention which, since it was intended to come into effect after the end of the transitional period, when freedom of trade between Member States had become complete, was able to confine itself to providing as follows: 'Products originating in the Associated States shall, on importation into the Community, be admitted free of customs duties and charges having equivalent effect, but the treatment applied to these products shall not be more favourable than that applied by the Member States among themselves.