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In those circumstances, the Verwaltungsgericht Berlin (Administrative Court, Berlin) decided to stay the proceedings and to refer the following questions to the Court for a preliminary ruling: ‘(1) (a) Is Article 7(1) and (7) of Directive 2014/40 … in conjunction with Article 7(14) of Directive 2014/40 … invalid on the ground of breach of the principle of legal certainty because it requires Member States to prohibit the placing on the market of particular tobacco products even though it is not stated clearly and precisely which of those tobacco products are to be prohibited from as early as 20 May 2016 and which only from 20 May 2020? (b) Is Article 7(1) and (7) of Directive 2014/40 … in conjunction with Article 7(14) of Directive 2014/40 … invalid on the ground of breach of the principle of equal treatment because it differentiates, as regards the prohibitions to be adopted by Member States, on the basis of sales volumes without any valid reason for doing so? (c) Is Article 7(1) and (7) of Directive 2014/40 … invalid on the ground of breach of the principle of proportionality and/or infringement of Article 34 TFEU because it requires Member States to prohibit, from as early as 20 May 2016, the placing on the market of tobacco products with a characterising flavour whose Union-wide sales volumes represent less than 3% in a particular product category? (d) If the answers to Question 1(a) to 1(c) are in the negative, how is the term “product category” in Article 7(14) of Directive 2014/40 … to be understood? Must assignment to “product categories” be based on the type of characterising flavour, on the type of (flavoured) tobacco product, or on a combination of both criteria? (e) If the answers to Question 1(a) to 1(c) are in the negative, how is it to be ascertained, with respect to a particular tobacco product, whether the 3% limit in Article 7(14) of Directive 2014/40 … has been reached, in the absence of any official and publicly accessible figures and statistics in that regard? (2) (a) When transposing Articles 8 to 11 of Directive 2014/40 … into national law, are Member States allowed to adopt supplementary transitional arrangements? (b) If the answer to Question 2(a) is in the negative: — Are Article 9(6) and Article 10(1)(f) of Directive 2014/40 … invalid on the ground of breach of the principle of proportionality and/or infringement of Article 34 TFEU because they delegate the determination of certain labelling and packaging requirements to the Commission without setting it a time limit in that respect and without providing for more extensive transitional arrangements or time limits to ensure that undertakings affected have adequate time to adapt to the requirements of the directive? — Are the second subparagraph of Article 9(1) (text of the warning), the second sentence of Article 9(4)(a) (font size), Article 10(1)(b) (smoking cessation information) and (e) (positioning of the warnings), and the first sentence of the first subparagraph of Article 11(1) (labelling) of Directive 2014/40 … invalid on the ground of breach of the principle of proportionality and/or infringement of Article 34 TFEU because they confer on Member States various rights of selection and design without setting them a time limit in that respect and without providing for more extensive transitional arrangements or time limits to ensure that undertakings affected have adequate time to adapt to the requirements of the directive? (3) (a) Must Article 13(1)(c) in conjunction with Article 13(3) of Directive 2014/40 … be interpreted as requiring Member States to prohibit the use of information referring to taste, smell, flavourings or other additives even where that information is not promotional information and the use of the ingredients is still permitted? (b) Is Article 13(1)(c) of Directive 2014/40 … invalid on the ground that it infringes Article 17 of the Charter …?’