Keywords

Summary



Keywords

1. Agriculture ° Common agricultural policy ° Regulations ° Procedure for adoption ° Protective measures ° Commission' s obligation to specify in its implementing regulation a period within which a reference may be made to the Council ° None

(Commission Regulation No 1932/93; Council Decision 87/373)

2. Agriculture ° Common organization of the markets ° Fruit and vegetables ° Imports from non-member countries ° Protective measures in respect of imports of sour cherries ° Principle of proportionality ° Principle of the protection of legitimate expectations ° Interim trade agreements between the Community and non-member countries ° Infringement ° None

(Commission Regulation No 1932/93)

Summary

1. When it adopted Regulation No 1932/93 establishing protective measures as regards the import of sour cherries, the Commission was not required to specify therein the time-limit within which any Member State might refer the protective measures adopted to the Council. Council Decision 87/373 laying down the procedures for the exercise of the implementing powers conferred on the Commission, Article 3 of which provides for determination of such a time-limit, applies, according to the second and third recitals in its preamble, only to the powers conferred after its entry into force and cannot therefore affect the validity of implementing measures adopted on the basis of implementing powers conferred on the Commission before it entered into force. Moreover, when the Council decides to use the procedure provided for in Article 3 of that decision, the time-limit within which any Member State may refer to it the decision adopted by the Commission must be indicated in the act by which the Council conferred on the Commission the power to adopt protective measures and not in such decisions as the Commission might adopt on the basis of that power.

2. The protective measures in respect of imports of sour cherries introduced in the fruit and vegetable sector by Regulation No 1932/93 did not contravene the principle of proportionality. Those measures, which were chosen in preference to more inhibitive measures, in particular measures restricting the volume of imports, were suited to the attainment of the objective pursued, namely to arrest the fall in product prices on the Community market and were adopted at a time when a less restrictive system, involving import licences, had proved insufficient.

Neither did they contravene the principle of the protection of legitimate expectations, since traders could not legitimately expect that an existing situation which was capable of being altered by decisions taken by the Community institutions would be maintained, particularly in view of the fact that, shortly before the adoption of that regulation, the Commission had established a system of import licences prompted by unfavourable market developments.

Finally, those measures cannot be seen as being in breach of the interim trade agreements concluded by the European Economic Community and the European Coal and Steel Community with the Republic of Poland, the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic and the Republic of Hungary, since, although Article 15 of each of those agreements requires each of the parties to enter into consultations where either of them has adopted protective measures concerning trade in agricultural products, that provision is effective only between the contracting parties and provides merely for a formal step to be taken after the adoption of protective measures. It cannot therefore be effectively relied on to contest the validity of the protective measures themselves.