5.

A factor of great importance for the purposes of the solution of this case is that of the check. The Commission and the German intervention agency maintain that the expression ‘place of storage’ must be understood as meaning ‘single place’ because it is necessary to ensure that the checks which must be made on producers by the competent national intervention agencies under Article 7 of Regulation No 2015/76 so as to ensure that the conditions to which the grant of aid is subject are being complied with, can be carried out. The above-mentioned Article 7 (1) provides in fact that ‘Member States shall take all measures to ensure that the necessary checks are made, and in particular that the identity of the product under contract may be verified and that the volume of the product stored agrees with that specified in the contract’. There is no doubt that there is a certain objective link between the place of storage and the check procedures in the sense that the checks will be easier and therefore more effective and less costly if the product to be checked is kept in a single place. The existence of a large number of places of storage, in particular if they are distant from one another, would make it more difficult to carry out those checks, the need for which is emphasized in Article 7 quoted above as well as in the recitals of the preamble to the regulation (see in particular the fourth recital of the preamble thereto). It does not seem to me however that it is possible to draw the conclusion from the above-mentioned connexion between the system of checks and the place of storage that the place of storage must in each case be a single one. It is necessary to consider in this respect that the problem may arise in essentially the same terms both in the case of a contract concluded with several associated producers each of which keeps the different part quantity of the prescribed quantity in his own cellar and in the case of a single producer who keeps his own products in several stores. Similar difficulties in carrying out the checks also arise when a single producer puts different types of table wine in the store (this possibility has been expressly taken into account by the national implementing provisions put into effect by the Federal Republic of Germany: see Bundesanzeiger 1977, No 243); each type of wine must in fact be kept in a different container and this makes it essential to repeat the technical check operations as many times as there are different containers. It is possible to say on the other hand that essentially similar difficulties would arise with regard to the checks whenever producers kept the wine in different containers even within the same cellar. I consider however that the interpretation according to which the place of storage does not have to be a single one to be more correct in that it is more in keeping with the interests involved and with the objectives of the Community rules. This does not prevent the national intervention agency from being able, in certain limited cases in which the product which is the subject-matter of the contract is divided up into small quantities stored in places distant from each other, to appraise, within the context of the reasonable discretion conferred upon it by the regulation, whether the factual conditions are such as to permit of well-timed and effective checks and to ascertain at the same time whether those checks have not become too costly as regards the objectives pursued by the system of aid. It will in short be for the competent national authorities to establish in each case according to the criteria which have been set out above whether the multiplicity of the places of storage is so great and fragmented as to prevent the conclusion of the contracts. The solution proposed is significantly confirmed in the judgment of this Court of 11 July 1973 in Case 3/73, Hessische Mehlindustrie Karl Schöttler KG v Einfuhr- und Vorratsstelle für Getreide und Futtermittel [1973] ECR 745, the purpose of which was a preliminary ruling on the interpretation of Regulation No 172/67/EEC of the Council and of Regulation (EEC) No 1403/69 of the Commission. Article 4 (3) of the latter regulation provided that the granting of the denaturing premium to cereal products was ‘subject to supervision by the intervention agency of the process of denaturing’. The Court held in this respect that the Community legislature, by not laying down detailed rules for the procedure for supervision, intended to leave the Member States the power to regulate them on their own responsibility and that for that reason it was for the national legislature to ensure by adequate supervision that denaturing was carried out in accordance with the relevant provisions and that claims for premiums were well founded. However, Articles 7 and 17 of Regulation No 2015/76 of the Commission also provide as regards aid to wine producers paid through the system of storage contracts that the national intervention agencies must carry out checks which are adequate to guarantee that the conditions for the grant of the aid are being complied with, without laying down the detailed rules according to which such checks must be carried out. Thus a certain margin of discretion is left to the Member States within the context, of course, of the objectives to be pursued defined by the regulation. I consider that the national intervention agencies may, in exercise of such discretion, also refuse to conclude contracts in certain limited cases where the product is excessively dispersed.