Keywords

Summary



Keywords

Agriculture - Common organization of the markets - Oils and fats - Compensatory payments for oil seeds - Member State benefiting from special transitional arrangements following its accession - Reduction of the final regional reference amounts - Overshoot of the maximum guaranteed area - Method of calculation - Exclusion from the system of compensatory adjustments for overshoots - Discrimination against producers in the Member State - None

(Act of Accession 1985, Art. 294; Council Regulation No 1765/92, Art. 5(1)(e) and (f) and Annex IV, as amended by Regulation No 232/94; Commission Regulation No 307/95)

Summary

Regulation No 307/95 which, in the context of implementation of the support system for producers of certain arable crops, establishes corrected final regional reference amounts for producers of soya beans, rape seed, colza seed and sunflower seed for the 1994/95 marketing year, is not, inasmuch as it reduces by 20% the final regional reference amounts for sunflower seeds produced in Portugal, unlawful in the light of Regulation No 1765/92 establishing that support system, as amended by Regulation No 232/94 implementing the agreement on oil seeds concluded by the Community with the United States of America within the framework of the GATT.

The reduction in question corresponds to the percentage by which the maximum guaranteed area set for Portuguese sunflower seed production in the 1994/95 marketing year and used as a basis for calculating crop-specific oil seed payments was exceeded. In that regard, Regulation No 307/95 correctly takes as a basis the establishment of the maximum guaranteed area allocated to Portugal, which takes account of the reduction in area laid down by Article 5(1)(e) of Regulation No 1765/92 without creating an exception for the area applicable to Portuguese sunflower seed producers set out in Annex IV to that regulation, and which also takes account of the area farmed by small Portuguese producers covered by a simplified scheme of compensation payments under Regulation No 1765/92, both for the purpose of including that area in the total area farmed in Portugal when assessing the extent to which the maximum guaranteed area was exceeded and for the purpose of applying the reduction laid down by Article 5(1)(e) likewise to the area farmed by those producers because they, like producers falling within the general scheme, are subject to the discipline of maximum guaranteed areas.

Moreover, that calculation of the maximum guaranteed area applicable to Portuguese sunflower seed producers complies with the special transitional arrangements from which those producers benefited pursuant to Article 294 of the Act of Accession, inasmuch as that provision does not exclude the alteration of the specific guarantee thresholds set for that State, and also with the abovementioned international agreement inasmuch as that agreement seeks to reduce oil seed subsidies throughout the Community.

Furthermore, the Commission was entitled to establish, by Regulation No 307/95, the size and the distribution of the reductions of the final regional reference amounts to be applied, following the overshoots of the maximum guaranteed areas recorded for the various Member States in the 1994/95 marketing year, in such a way as to exclude Portuguese sunflower seed cultivation from compensatory adjustment of the overshoot by the transfer of unutilized areas of land within the maximum guaranteed area in the other Member States.

First, the method of compensatory adjustment used in Regulation No 307/95 pursuant to Article 5(1)(f) of Regulation No 1765/92 ensured equality between the weighted average reduction for each of the separate categories of maximum guaranteed area - including that allocated to Portugal for sunflower seed cultivation - and the percentage by which their respective maximum guaranteed areas were exceeded; secondly, the exclusion of Portuguese sunflower seed producers from the system of compensatory payments cannot be regarded as discriminatory, because they were not in a position comparable to that of the other producers in the Community in that, under the Act of Accession, Portuguese producers continued to benefit from special arrangements involving the setting of a specific maximum guaranteed area which were intended to ensure that they enjoyed some security of income, irrespective of developments recorded in the other Member States.