VI —

This survey of the background to the provisions which I have just conducted shows, if indeed it was necessary, the difficulty of securing and retaining a balance in agriculture and the variations to which ideas and techniques are subject: the application of a particular solution is dependent upon the analysis of a body of complex economic facts, the appraisal of which falls outside the ambit of review by the Court of Justice in delivering a preliminary ruling, except in a case of manifest error or manifest failure to observe the provisions of the Treaty and of the Community regulations. A long practice, which led the plaintiff in the main action to believe that it enjoyed an inalienable right to a refund, was succeeded by a group of measures presenting the appearance of hand-to-mouth expedients rather than a coherent long-term policy and I can conceive that the plans of starch manufacturers were completely upset thereby. However, did this practice confer upon the plaintiff in the main action an absolute right that the amount of the refund should remain unchanged and did it prevent the Council from observing, as it claims to have done, the wording of Article 7 of Regulation No 1132/74? I think not. The rules for determining prices and amounts are indeed normally applied at the beginning of the marketing year for the relevant product (second recital in the preamble to Regulation No 2518/74 of the Commission), but when the world economic situation is changeable and difficult the principle of the annual fixing of agricultural prices and amounts is not sacrosanct. As soon as it is recognized that the Council is entitled in the course of a marketing year to alter the dates of that marketing year and that it has power to depart from the principles of the validity for periods of one year and of the unity of the marketing year in order to obtain a better grading of prices — which the plaintiff does not dispute and which the Court of Justice itself has admitted in the cane-sugar cases (Judgment of 31 March 1977 in Joined Cases 54 to 60/76 — Compagnie Industrielle et Agricole du Comté de Loheac and Others v Council and Commission) it is also reasonable to recognize the Council's right to bring up to date in the course of a marketing year target and intervention prices, along with threshold prices which constitute one of the factors on which the refund is calculated, to decide the dates on which such alterations in price shall occur in order to take account of developments in world prices and to take into consideration the effect of such development on supply prices, the more so since this alteration of the supply price was established by the Council acting by a qualified majority (Article 43 (2)) and not by the Commission alone acting in accordance with the management committee procedure. I consider that the Court may not substitute its appraisal for that of the Council and the Commission, acting in concert, of the appreciable and persistent nature of the variations in the world prices of the basic products, at least in the absence of a manifest error. The survey which I have carried out shows, I think, that the criteria established mutatis mutandis by the Council in order to find that the threshold price has been appreciably exceeded by the cif price and to appraise whether such a situation is perhaps persistent (Regulation No 1968/73 of 19 July 1973) were observed when Regulation No 3113/74 was adopted. Until November 1974 the world rates for maize rose; the appreciable nature of this increase is confirmed by the introduction, in accordance with Article 7 (2) of Regulation No 1132/74, of an export levy on processed products and by the fact that until the beginning of 1975, apart from May, June and July 1974, no import levy was imposed on maize. The fact that the world rates had progressed in this fashion would certainly have given ground for a much earlier adaptation of supply prices. However, there was complete justification for such an adjustment when the Commission, on 12 November 1974, submitted its proposal to the Council. Examination of the tables produced by the Commission and by the plaintiff in the main action show that from December 1974 the world rates, expressed in US-dollars, began to fall and that between the time when Regulation No 3113/74 entered into force (15 December 1974) and the time when it was applied (1 April 1975) the trends in prices of basic products had reversed so that the fixing of the amount of the refund which was effected at this date was even more justified on the basis of Regulation No 1955/75 than on the basis of Regulation No 1132/74. Such discrepancies between the movement of prices and action by the Community authorities are unfortunately frequent. However, the plaintiff in the main action cannot complain of the postponed application of the Council's regulation, which was introduced in the interests of the plaintiff, and which meant that the trends in world prices had changed when the alteration announced on 9 December 1974 was applied but which permitted it to enjoy until 1 April 1975 a refund amounting to 24.60 u.a per metric ton. From April 1975 the supply price to the industry was increased (10.31 u.a.) but it remained constant until August 1975 so that the amount of the refund, which is equal to the difference between the threshold price (itself increasing) and the supply price, increased in relative value so reflecting in some measure the fall in world prices. Since the Community is short of maize there is nothing unusual in the fact that its European supply price aligned with the threshold price and not with the target price, still less with an under-valued intervention price. In sum, before 9 December 1974 the world rates had indeed undergone appreciable and persistent variations within the meaning of Article 7 (1) of Regulation No 1132/74 and the supply price which the plaintiff in the main action enjoyed for the 1974/1975 marketing year as a whole does not seem to me unfair. Maize-starch manufacturers had no inalienable right to a refund of a guaranteed amount. Sufficient notice of the reduction was given by Regulation No 3113/74. When account is taken of the period of three months during which there was official supervision (Regulations of the Commission No 2012/74 of 31 July 1974 and No 10/75 of 31 December 1974) the effect of this reduction could easily have been absorbed. None of the first three complaints submitted against the contested provision seems to me well founded.