20.

In its judgment in Emerald Meats, ( 12 ) the Court had an opportunity to address a problem which in certain respects is analogous to that in the present case. The Emerald Meats case concerned the allocation of an import quota within the common organization of the market in beef. ( 13 ) As in the present case, the Commission allocated the quota on the basis of lists compiled by the Member States, which were required to indicate the operators and import quantities to be taken into account. Over the reference period, the Emerald Meats company had acquired national quota percentages from processing undertakings and had effected imports. The Irish authorities' interpretation of the implementing regulation, however, had the result that these import quantities were allocated to the processing undertakings and not to Emerald Meats. The company brought proceedings before the Irish High Court and also before the Court of Justice. The following year, the company also applied for licences in the United Kingdom. With a view to preventing any double counting of the same amounts on the basis of Emerald Meats' application in the United Kingdom and the application of the processing undertakings in Ireland, the Commission provided in its implementing regulation ( 14 ) that import licences could, in cases where two or more importers had submitted an application on the basis of the same import quantity, be issued only against lodgment of a guarantee. The Commission also required the Irish authorities to reassess the allocation for 1991. ( 15 ) Finally, it is evident from the Report for the Hearing that, in calculating the reduction coefficient, the Commission had included only once the double quantities notified by Emerald Meats and the processing undertakings. ( 16 ) The coefficient, as calculated, thus did not include any quantities which had been counted twice. Emerald Meats argued before the Court, inter alia, that the Commission was under a duty to set aside the Irish authorities' allocation of import quantities to the processing undertakings. The Court ruled in paragraph 40 of its judgment that ‘nor do the requirements of Community management entail that the Commission ought necessarily to be able to correct wrong decisions taken in specific cases by the national authorities in connection with management of the quotas, since compliance with the common rules and their uniform application throughout the Member States of the Community can be secured either by proceedings under Article 169 of the Treaty for failure to fulfil obligations or in the course of judicial proceedings brought before national courts, which have available the procedure provided for in Article 177 of the Treaty’. The Court further ruled in paragraph 50 that the Commission also could not ‘substitute itself for the Member States' authorities and correct the lists which they had notified to it or admit the same reference quantities as they stood twice, for this would have unlawfully reduced the quantities available for allocation to other operators in the Community on the basis of the quantities which they had proved they had imported during the reference years’. In those circumstances, the Court held that the Commission had been reasonably entitled to require lodgment of a guarantee.