5.

One factor which seems to me to merit emphasis in order to answer the question put by the national court is the specific nature of the measures constituting each organization of the agricultural market. There is no uniform kind of organization nor for that reason is there a fixed classification of the Community provisions which are gradually introduced sector by sector. On the contrary each sector reflects its technical and economic characteristics in an organization corresponding to its own requirements. Certainly, the measures which may be comprised in a common organization of the market have in common the fact of all being instruments for achieving the aims of the agricultural policy as set out in Article 39 of the EEC Treaty, but it is well recognized that those aims too are diverse and there is no specific hierarchy between them. Among the measures in question Article 40 (3) mentions in particular, but only by way of example, the regulation of prices, aids for the production and marketing of the various products, storage and carryover arrangements and common machinery for stabilizing imports or exports. It is thus apparent that the technical methods by which a common organization of the market is realized may vary greatly and that they have a more or less direct and exhaustive influence on the system of the market according to their scope and content. This being so the first problem to resolve is that of defining the connexion between the special structure of a particular organization of the market and any retention of power by the Member States to control prices. If the argument is accepted that national measures on prices are necessarily incompatible with the mere, existence of a common organization of the market, obviously any possibility of the Member States' remaining in a position to adopt provisions on prices is excluded from the very moment when a given agricultural sector becomes subject to a common organization. It may, however, be that the organization contains no provisions at all on prices or confines them, as actually happens, to one or two marketing stages. In a case of this kind, accepting the point of view maintained by Counsel for Mr Grosoli, it would be necessary to say that the mere face that the Community exercises its power to create a common organization of the market would deprive the Member States of any power in that sector. There is no justification for such a statement either in Article 5 of the Treaty or from the wording of the judgment in Galli which I have previously summarized. We have seen that that judgment stresses the importance of a particular aspect of the common organization of the market in a particular agricultural product (cereals), namely price control. In the final part at paragraph 34 the Court stressed the importance of the particular structure of the organization in a particular sector when it stated that ‘the price system established by Regulations Nos 120/67 and 136/66 is applicable solely at the production and wholesale stage, with the result that these provisions leave Member States free … to take the appropriate measures relating to price formation at the retail and consumption stages, on condition that they do not jeopardize the aims or functioning of the common organization of the market in question.’ Subsequent judgments of the Court of Justice also concern particular common organizations of the market and thus confirm the tendency to assess each case on its merit in relation to the connexion between the structure of the organization and the powers retained by the States (see the judgments in Tasca, SADAM and Dechmann to which I have already referred). This view seems to me very reasonable and well founded. It is not possible seriously to assert that every national measure concerning prices must of necessity have an adverse effect upon the functioning of the common organization whatever the kind of organization and whatever the nature of the action taken by the State. The Court rightly observed in the judgments in Tasca and SADAM that where the Community and national actions concern the same marketing, stage (for example wholesale prices) it is more likely, but not inevitable, that the national system will conflict with that of the Community. On the other hand, where the steps taken by the State concern consumer prices and those of the Community wholesale prices there is less likelihood of the two system's being incompatible. In the same way it is possible to imagine that the organization of the market fixes the prices (wholesale or retail) of the agricultural products to which it relates and that the national steps concern only a very restricted part of such products defined in the terms of particular characteristics (for example frozen beef and veal as against fresh beef and veal). In the case of this kind if the product subject to the national provision is not in competition with the main product because consumer preference in respect of the latter tends to be inflexible it would be unwise to claim that to impose quite moderate maximum prices on the particular product (in our example frozen meat) will necessarily cause a change in consumer preference leading to increased demand for the particular product and correspondingly reduced demand for the main product. There may well be no such effect and therefore in a case of this kind national steps with regard to prices may well cause no disturbance to the functioning of the common organization of the market.