Keywords

Summary



Keywords

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1 . Agriculture - Common organization of the markets - Wine - Compulsory distillation of table wines - Implementation - Obligations imposed on the Member States - Application to producers concerned of coercive measures provided for by national law

( Council Regulation No 337/79, Arts 6(1 ), 41 and 64(1 ) and ( 2 ) )

2 . Member States - Obligations - Failure to comply with them - Justification based on the impossibility, in view of the requirements of national law, of adopting coercive measures required by Community law, or on the foreseeable refusal of courts to confirm such measures - Not acceptable

( EEC Treaty, Arts 169 and 177 )

3 . Measures adopted by the institutions - Regulations - Commission regulation - Implementation absolutely impossible in a Member State - Obligation on the Commission and the Member State to work together to find a solution in accordance with the Treaty

( EEC Treaty, Art . 5 and Art . 189, second paragraph )

Summary

1 . Article 64(1 ) of Regulation No 337/79 requires Member States to take all necessary measures to ensure compliance with Community provisions in the wine sector, whether such measures are already provided for by national law or have to be incorporated into it . It therefore constitutes a sufficiently clear and precise legal basis for the adoption of national coercive measures designed to ensure the effective implementation of compulsory distillation measures adopted by the Commission pursuant to Article 41 of Regulation No 337/79 . A Member State cannot decline to apply such measures on the grounds that recalcitrant producers are already liable to a penalty under Community law itself, whereby they are barred, under Article 6(1 ) of the regulation, from enjoying the benefit of intervention measures, or on the ground that by providing that the Council is to adopt measures to ensure the uniform application of Community provisions, particularly as regards control, Article 64(2 ) places the onus on the Council, and not on the Member States, of taking the measures necessary to ensure the effective implementation of compulsory distillation measures .

2 . A Member State may not plead provisions, practices or circumstances existing in its internal legal system in order to justify a failure to comply with its obligations under Community law .

It cannot therefore rely on the fact that the conditions laid down by its national law for the implementation of such measures were not satisfied in order to justify its own failure to resort to coercive measures against certain producers, as Community law required it to do . It also cannot justify its inaction by contending that, had such measures been adopted, their application would probably have been suspended by the courts in view of serious doubts about the validity of the Community legislation which imposed them, since, in the first place, a Member State cannot rely on the possible or probable attitude of its national courts in order to justify its own failure and, secondly, those courts have available to them the procedure under Article 177 if they are uncertain about the validity of secondary legislation .

3 . When a Member State in implementing a Commission regulation encounters unforeseeable difficulties which make it absolutely impossible to carry out the obligations imposed by that regulation, it must submit those problems to the Commission and suggest to it appropriate solutions . In such a case, the Commission and the Member State are obliged, by virtue of the reciprocal duties of genuine cooperation imposed on them in particular by Article 5 of the EEC Treaty, to work together in good faith in order to overcome those difficulties while complying in full with the provisions of the Treaty .