Stichting Zuid-Hollandse Milieufederatie v Minister van Landbouw, Natuur en Voedselkwaliteit.
Date: 2006-09-14
23. The Court may, of its own motion, on a proposal from the Advocate General or at the request of the parties, order the reopening of the oral procedure under Article 61 of its Rules of Procedure, if it considers that it lacks sufficient information or that the case must be dealt with on the basis of an argument which has not been debated between the parties (see, order of 4 February 2000 in Case C-17/98 Emesa Sugar  [2000] ECR I-665, paragraph 18, and Case C-210/03 Swedish Match  [2004] ECR I-11893, paragraph 25).
29. In that regard, it must be borne in mind that, in accordance with settled case-law, in the context of the cooperation between the Court of Justice and the national courts under Article 234 EC it is solely for the national court, before which the dispute has been brought and which must assume responsibility for the subsequent judicial decision, to determine in the light of the particular circumstances of the case both the need for a preliminary ruling in order to enable it to deliver judgment and the relevance of the questions which it submits to the Court. Consequently, where the questions submitted for a preliminary ruling concern the interpretation of Community law, the Court is, in principle, bound to give a ruling (see, inter alia, Case C-415/93 Bosman  [1995] ECR I-4921, paragraph 59; Case C-35/99 Arduino  [2002] ECR I-1529, paragraph 24; and Case C-316/04 Stichting Zuid-Hollandse Milieufederatie  [2005] ECR I-9759, paragraph 29).
30. However, the Court has also stated that, in exceptional circumstances, it may examine the conditions in which the case was referred to it by the national court, in order to assess whether it has jurisdiction (see, to that effect, Case 244/80 Foglia  [1981] ECR 3045, paragraph 21). The Court may refuse to rule on a question referred for a preliminary ruling by a national court only where it is quite obvious that the interpretation of Community law that is sought bears no relation to the facts of the main action or its purpose, where the problem is hypothetical, or where the Court does not have before it the factual or legal material necessary to give a useful answer to the questions submitted to it (see, inter alia, Bosman , paragraph 61; Arduino , paragraph 25; and Stichting Zuid-Hollandse Milieufederatie , paragraph 30).
33. Second, although, in accordance with its wording, Article 16aa of the Bmw applies only to plant protection products (gewasbeschermingsmiddelen), it cannot be maintained that the interpretation of Article 16 of Directive 98/8 bears no relation to the facts of the main action or its purpose, or that the problem is hypothetical. Indeed, referring to paragraph 44 of the judgment in Case C‑306/98 Monsanto  [2001] ECR I‑3279, in which the Court held that Directive 98/8 contains, in relation to the placing of products on the market, provisions which bear a large number of similarities to those of Directive 91/414, and asking essentially whether the provisions of Article 16(1) of Directive 98/8, under which a Member State may, during the transitional period, continue to apply its system or practice of placing biocidal products on the market, are also to be found in Article 8(2) of Directive 91/414, the national court demonstrated that its second question was well founded.
36. The Court has already answered an identical question in the affirmative in paragraphs 59 to 63 of the judgment in Stichting Zuid‑Hollandse Milieufederatie .
42. It must be borne in mind that although the Member States are not obliged to adopt measures to transpose a directive before the end of the period prescribed for transposition, it follows from the second paragraph of Article 10 EC in conjunction with the third paragraph of Article 249 EC and from the directive itself that during that period they must refrain from taking any measures liable seriously to compromise the result prescribed by that directive (Case C-129/96 Inter-Environnement Wallonie  [1997] ECR I-7411, paragraph 45). The same applies to a transitional period, such as that provided for in Article 8(2) of Directive 91/414 (see, by analogy, Stichting Zuid-Hollandse Milieufederatie , paragraph 42).
43. The Court notes that Directive 91/414 is aimed not only at improving plant production and removing barriers to intra-Community trade in plant products, but also at protecting human and animal health and the environment (see, to that effect, Case C‑174/05 Zuid‑Hollandse Milieufederatie and Natuur en Milieu  [2006] ECR I-2443, paragraph 30).