Kingdom of Spain v Council of the European Union.
Date: 2006-03-30
27. The Court has already held in Case 46/86 Romkes  [1987] ECR 2671, paragraph 17, and confirmed in a series of judgments delivered in 1992, that the requirement of relative stability must be understood as meaning that each Member State is to retain a fixed percentage when fishing opportunities are distributed. The Court added that the distribution formula originally laid down taking account of the quantities taken on average by the fleets of the various Member States during the period from 1973 to 1978 will continue to apply as long as an amending regulation has not been adopted according to the procedure which was followed for Regulation No 170/83 (see, inter alia, Romkes , paragraph 6; Case C‑70/90 Spain  v Council  [1992] ECR I‑5159, paragraph 15; Case C‑71/90 Spain  v Council  [1992] ECR I‑5175, paragraph 15; and C‑73/90 Spain  v Council  [1992] ECR I‑5191, paragraph 28).
28. The Court has also ruled on the consequences of the accession of a new Member State, in particular the accession of the Kingdom of Spain, to the European Community. It held that such an event cannot in itself produce legal effects, since the conditions of accession are set out in the Act of accession (see Case C‑70/90 Spain  v Council , paragraph 16). As regards the Kingdom of Spain, it stated that, pursuant to Article 2 of the Act of accession, the acquis communautaire , that is to say the provisions of the original Treaties and the acts adopted by the institutions of the Communities before accession, must be applied, in particular the principle of relative stability as applied in 1983 (see Joined Cases C‑63/90 and C‑67/90 Portugal and Spain  v Council  [1992] ECR I‑5073, paragraphs 31, 32 and 34, and Case C‑70/90 Spain v Council , paragraphs 19 and 29).
32. Therefore, as regards the scale for allocation of fishing opportunities fixed before the accession of the Kingdom of Spain to the European Community, the absence of any adjustments to that scale by a subsequent act of the Council, and in particular by Regulation No 2341/2002, is not contrary to the principle of relative stability.
33. It follows that the plea raised in Case C‑100/03, alleging infringement of that principle, must be dismissed.
35. As regards those allocations it must be observed that the principle of relative stability, which is set out in Regulation No 3760/92, remains relevant.
36. The Council, supported by the Commission, submits that it has defined a recent and representative reference period covering several years and has examined the quantities caught by fishermen from Member States in order to take account of the needs of regions where local populations are especially dependent on fisheries. Since Spanish vessels have not been present in the waters concerned for many years, no quota was allocated to the Kingdom of Spain either at the time of the initial allocation or when the allocation for 2003 was made, in accordance with the principle of relative stability.
38. In that connection, it must be observed that the allocation of fishing opportunities among Member States, as provided for in Article 8(4) of Regulation No 3760/92, requires the assessment of a complex economic situation in respect of which the Council enjoys a wide discretionary power. Consequently, the review of the Court must be limited to verifying that the measure in question is not vitiated by any manifest error or a misuse of powers, and that the authority concerned has not manifestly exceeded the limits of its power of assessment (Case C‑189/01 Jippes and Others  [2001] ECR I‑5689, paragraph 80, and Case C‑304/01 Spain  v Commission  [2004] ECR I‑7655, paragraph 23).
39. In the context of the substantial diminution of the species of fish observed by the Council and the Commission, it must be held, first of all, that the Council has not infringed the principle of relative stability by fixing a recent reference period covering several years in respect of the first allocation of quotas for certain species in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. As is clear from paragraph 42 of the judgment in Case C-120/99 Italy v Council  [2001] ECR I-7997, the Community legislature has a high degree of flexibility in that area.
40. Nor has the Council infringed the principle of relative stability by excluding the Kingdom of Spain from that allocation, given the absence of Spanish vessels from those two seas during the transitional period.
44. No objective reason justifies that discrimination. The general rule of the full applicability of all Community law to new Member States from the time of their accession must be observed. Derogations from that rule provided for in an act of accession are temporary and should be strictly interpreted.
48. Compliance with the principle of equal treatment requires that comparable situations must not be treated differently and that different situations must not be treated in the same way unless such treatment is objectively justified (see, in particular, Case C‑44/94 Fishermen’s Organisations and Others  [1995] ECR I‑3115, paragraph 46).
51. In paragraph 41 of the judgment in Portugal and Spain  v Council , the Portuguese Republic argued that the Portuguese fleet had carried on fishing activities in Greenland waters from 1973 to 1977, that is, during part of the initial reference period, and pointed out that the quantities caught by its fleet were comparable to those caught by the German fleet and substantially higher than those caught by the United Kingdom fleet.
52. The Court held none the less that the Portuguese Republic’s situation was not comparable to that of the other Member States included in the allocation. It held that, in so far as the Act of accession has not changed the existing situation as regards the allocation of external resources, the existing Community rules continue to be applicable. Accordingly, the new Member States cannot rely on circumstances antedating accession, in particular their fishing activities during the reference period, in support of their contention that the provisions in question should not be applied. Since their accession, they have been in the same position as the Member States excluded from the allocations under the principle of relative stability of fishing activities, which was reflected, as far as the agreements concluded before accession are concerned, in the allocation effected in 1983 ( Portugal and Spain  v Council , paragraphs 43 and 44).
53. That reasoning is applicable to the present cases. It follows that the Kingdom of Spain is not in a situation comparable to that of the Member States whose vessels were included in the quotas at the time of the initial allocation and that, consequently, the Spanish Government cannot rely on the fishing activities of Spanish vessels between 1973 and 1976 in the North Sea during the initial reference period. Its situation is, however, comparable to that of the Member States which did not obtain such quotas, whether or not those Member States carried on fishing activities in the waters of the North Sea and/or the Baltic Sea during the initial reference period.
55. The Council, the Commission and the United Kingdom have rightly submitted that it is important to distinguish between access to Community waters and access to resources. Whilst, after the end of the transitional period, the Kingdom of Spain may once again have access to the waters of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, it does not follow that Spanish vessels may have access to the resources of those seas in the same proportions as the Member States which participated in the initial or subsequent allocations.
56. As it is clear from paragraph 41 of this judgment, the Council was entitled to consider that since Spanish vessels had not fished in the waters of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea for more than 20 years, the failure to allocate quotas did not infringe the principle of relative stability of the fishing activities of the populations concerned. It follows that the Council was also entitled to consider that the Kingdom of Spain was not in a position equivalent to that of the Member States whose vessels had recently, during the relevant reference period, fished in those waters.
64. It must be observed that Articles 154 to 166 of the Act of accession define the regime applicable in the fishing sector only during the transitional period. Those articles cannot, therefore, serve, in principle, as the basis for claims concerning a period commencing on a date subsequent to the end of that transitional period.
66. Even if the regime applicable during the transitional period is temporary by definition, it does not follow that all the restrictions for which it provides cease automatically when that period comes to an end, if those restrictions also arise from existing Community law applicable to that Member State. As was stated in paragraph 29 of this judgment, the acquis communautaire  includes the scale for allocation fixed by the existing rules at the time of the accession of the Kingdom of Spain. That scale for allocation remains, in principle, in force so long as it has not been amended by an act of the Council. As to the quotas allocated during the transitional period, they are not governed by the Act of accession but by the regulations establishing the quotas concerned and by the principle of relative stability.