3.

Let us now turn our attention to the application of those provisions. Article 2 (4) of Regulation No 1599/75 provides that the necessary arrangements are to be adopted in accordance with the management committee procedure laid down in Article 27 of Regulation No 805/68. Article 3 of Regulation No 3328/75 also provides that such arrangements (particularly, the basis for calculation, the reference period, the rules for determining the tax to be charged by the exporting country, the issue of import licences, the admissible proof, etc.) are to be defined by the management committee. In the fourth and fifth recitals in the preamble to Regulation No 3376/75 of 23 December 1975, which laid down detailed rules for the application of Regulation No 3328/75, (Official Journal 1975, L 333, p. 44), the Commission recognized that import charges varied from one Member State to another according to the levy applicable and that that difference was compounded by the application of different accession and monetary compensatory amounts. In order to avoid complex administrative problems, the Commission therefore considered it appropriate: (a) to make provision for a standard method of calculating the said charges, on the one hand, in the Member States which still applied accession compensatory amounts (the United Kingdom and Ireland), and on the other, in the remaining Member States; (b) to adopt for each of those ‘regions’ the compensatory amounts applicable in the State which absorbed most of the meat imports. Article 4 of the regulation under consideration (as amended by Commission Regulation No 3136/76 of 22 December 1976, Official Journal 1976, L 353, p. 40) therefore fixed, in paragraph (1), the amount provided for in Article 1 (1) of Regulation No 3328/75 for products intended for importation into Ireland or the United Kingdom and, in paragraph (2), the amount in respect of importations into the other Member States. With regard to the latter, the reduction was to be equal to 90% of the levy, adjusted, where appropriate, by the compensatory amount applicable for France ‘during the week preceding that in which commences the quarter for which the amount of the reduction is calculated’. Article 1 of Commission Regulation No 931/77 of 29 April 1977 (Official Journal 1977, L 109, p. 15) introduced a derogation from that provision: the reduction for the period beginning on 2 May 1977 was calculated on the basis of the levies and compensatory amounts, both accession and monetary, applicable from that date. It now remains to examine the provisions which are the subject of the Finanzgericht's question. Article 1 of Commission Regulation No 932/77 of 29 April 1977 (Official Journal 1977, L 109, p. 16), and the annex thereto, lay down the amount of the reduction in respect of importations from ACP States in the period from 2 May to 30 June 1977. Applying the criteria laid down in Regulation No 3376/75 the annex distinguishes the ‘regions’ into which the Community is divided. With regard to products covered by subheading 16.02 B III b 1 (aa), which are the kind imported by Spitta, the reduction for Member States other than Ireland and the United Kingdom was fixed at 143956 units of account per 100 kg. That figure represents 90% of the levy adjusted by the monetary compensatory amount valid for France. We have thus reached the last stage of the long and laborious series of provisions dealing with import levies. Let me make clear that this stage is subsequent to the facts of the case. However, it is useful to refer to it because of the light that it throws on the earlier rules. By Regulation No 622/78 of 30 March 1978 (Official Journal 1978, L 84, p. 15), the Commission modified the rules (Regulation No 3376/75) on the basis of which the reductions had been calculated up to then. Thenceforth the amount by which the charges were reduced was to be equal to 90% of the levy adjusted, where necessary, by the monetary compensatory amount valid in the importing Member State. The Commission thus abandoned the system which consisted of dividing the Community into two ‘regions’ and of basing the reductions for one of those regions on the situation prevailing in France. The Commission also decided to express the amount in question not in units of account but in the currency of each Member State.