2.

The first question concerns basically the problem of the direct applicability of the Community regulations referred to in my summary of the facts. Reference may first be made to the general legal basis for those measures, Article 189 of the EEC Treaty. That article provides that regulations have general application, that they are binding in their entirety and are directly applicable in all Member States. It should also be remembered that the Court of Justice emphasized in proceedings with a similar subject-matter, Case 43/71, that, by reason of their nature and their function in the system of the sources of Community law, regulations have direct effect and are, as such, capable of creating individual rights which national courts must protect. Nevertheless, the problem concerning us here can of course not be solved so easily. Already in our examination of the facts it became clear that the practical implementation of Community measures affecting the agricultural structure in the milk production sector relies — as is frequently the case in Community law — on the cooperation of national law, and that even when Community rules are drafted in great detail they still require national measures for their administrative application. Therefore an answer to the question of the legal effects depends on the questions whether an area of discretion was left to the national authorities in the matter of implementation and in what manner the national provisions were to supplement the measures adopted. Seen in this way the present case appears as follows. The Commission set out in full on page 8 of its observations the measures which Member States were to adopt so that farmers might submit applications for the grant of the slaughtering subsidy and carry out the slaughtering within the prescribed period. The competent authorities for the processing and examination of the applications submitted had to be named; a reference date had to be fixed on which the number of cows kept was to serve as a basis for entitlement to obtain slaughtering subsidies; the number of cows for which the slaughtering subsidy was payable had to be established; those cows had to be marked; the undertaking to cease milk production for a period of five years and to have the cows slaughtered before 30 April 1970 had to be entered in a particular register; the form of the identification cards mentioned in Article 6 of Regulation No 2195 had to be determined and the cards had to be completed; the slaughterhouses to be used had to be designated and finally the Commission had to be informed of the number of applications submitted and of cows slaughtered. It may certainly be stated that the abovementioned circular from the Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry laid down all the necessary details and that therefore the Community rules had been sufficiently supplemented on the national level as regards administrative procedure. In addition however, and this is particularly important, it is clearly possible to discount the existence of any national discretionary power under the Community regulations. As the Commission rightly emphasized, the sole discretionary power in this respect lay with the Commission itself, in that it had to decide whether the applications submitted could be granted. In view of the detailed and binding rules of application contained in Article 9 of Regulation No 1975/69 of the Commission, after this decision had been taken the authorities of the Member States had only fixed administrative powers. This may be said because evidently no use was made of the opportunity provided in Article 10 of Regulation No 1975/69 ‘to impose additional conditions for the grant of the subsidies referred to in Articles 1 and 5’ with the permission of the Commission and because it may be concluded from the lack of notification to the Commission to this effect that Italy did not make use of the opportunity provided in Article 19 of Regulation No 2195/69 to adopt additional conditions. Thus in view of the legislative nature of the measures adopted by the Community, their clarity and legal completeness, it could be held that the question as to direct applicability should be answered in the affirmative, if there did not exist another objection to this finding which is, in the opinion of the Italian Government, of considerable importance. The Italian Government argues that under Italian constitutional law, in cases such as the present, the adoption of national legislation to implement Community law is necessary for two reasons. On the one hand, with regard to the problem of ‘regionalization’, the authorities competent to implement the Community rule had to be determined. On the other hand, Article 81 of the constitution requires that a law providing for new items of expenditure must state in what manner the necessary funds are to be allocated. Until such legislation is adopted, it is not possible to admit of a direct obligation to make payments on the basis of Community law. In considering what opinion to adopt with regard to this objection and whether it must indeed be regarded as valid, the following consideration must not be overlooked. For measures connected with the agricultural sector such as those concerning us here, which are evidently intended to enable those concerned to commence a new activity quickly, for the purpose of gaining the trust of those concerned, which is an important factor in the success of the scheme, it is absolutely necessary that the intended effect should be achieved swiftly and at the same time in all the Member States. Reference is made to this in the seventh recital of the preamble to Regulation No 2195, where it is stated that ‘it should be ensured that subsidies are paid in all Member States within the same period…’. If this requirement were ignored, essential aims of the common agricultural policy would be endangered both now and in the future. However, this necessarily implies that if analysis of the Community provisions does not reveal any reservation of powers to the national legislature then reference may not be made to the rules of national budgetary law over which Community law has precedence. It cannot therefore be argued that because the national legislature holds the power to allocate the budget resources and to determine the priorities for that allocation, an enforceable claim can only arise when the Member State issues an order for payment. Measures adopted by the Member States can therefore have no influence on individual rights flowing from Community law if the whole existence of the Community is not to be put in doubt; nor may they form an obstacle to the direct applicability of Community law. Such considerations and principles have already been stated in a series of decisions of the Court of Justice on related problems, in relation to which it was emphasized that the uniform and similar implementation of laws was essential to the Community and that the possibility of national provisions altering the scope of Community measures was therefore excluded. The judgment of the Court in Case 34/70 ([1970] ECR 1233), according to which national implementing provisions may not amend measures of Community law, must be borne in mind, as also must the finding in the judgment in Case 13/68 ([1968] ECR 453 at p. 462) that ‘The complexity of certain situations in a State cannot alter the legal nature of a Community provision which is directly applicable, and this is particularly the case considering that the Community rule must have the same binding force in all Member States’. This in fact sets out the basic premise for solving problems such as that facing us in the present case. However, a necessary result must be that the objection raised by the Italian Government carries no conviction. Accordingly, the first question must be answered to the effect that in view of their legislative nature, their clarity and the comprehensive nature of the provisions adopted, and in the absence of any national discretionary power, the regulations mentioned in that question are directly applicable. Therefore the provisions of Article 10 of Regulation No 2195/69 create individual rights which national courts must protect.