Reinhard Maier v Freistaat Bayern.
Date: 1992-07-09
11 Taken together, those definitions show that the term "producers" in Article 3a of Regulation No 1546/88 refers only to farmers who, for the purposes of milk production, operate all the production units on their own account. Where a holding has been let, those conditions are fulfilled only by the lessee, who enjoys the right to operate the holding, and not by the lessor, the landlord who, by the very fact of letting the holding, has transferred that right to the lessee.
12 A farmer who lets a holding which he owns therefore loses the status of producer in relation to that holding and can no longer operate it within the meaning of the abovementioned rules.
20 In those judgments, the Court held that a producer who has voluntarily ceased production for a certain period cannot legitimately expect to be able to resume production under the same conditions as those which had previously applied and not to be subject to any rules of market or structural policy adopted in the mean time (Mulder, paragraph 23, and von Deetzen, paragraph 12), but that, on the other hand, where such a producer has been encouraged by a Community measure to suspend marketing for a limited period in the general interest and against payment of a premium he may legitimately expect not to be subject, upon the expiry of his undertaking, to restrictions which specifically affect him precisely because he availed himself of the possibilities offered by the Community provisions (Mulder, paragraph 24, and von Deetzen, paragraph 13).
21 In that respect, it is sufficient to note, as the Court declared in Case C-44/89 von Deetzen v Hauptzollamt Oldenburg [1991] ECR I-5119, paragraph 21, that whilst producers who had entered into a non-marketing or conversion undertaking under Regulation No 1078/77 were legitimately entitled to expect to be able to resume the marketing of milk at the end of their non-marketing or conversion period and to carry on that activity under conditions that involved no discrimination between them and other milk producers, they could not thereby expect a common organization of the market to confer on them a commercial advantage which did not derive from their farming activity.
25 As the Court has consistently held (see, most recently, von Deetzen v Hauptzollamt Oldenburg, paragraph 23), the prohibition of discrimination between Community producers laid down in Article 40(3) of the Treaty is merely a specific enunciation of the general principle of equality which is one of the fundamental principles of Community law. That principle requires that similar situations must not be treated differently unless differentiation is objectively justified.
26 In the light of those criteria, the refusal to allow farmers who let their holdings prior to the entry into force of the modified scheme in 1989 to obtain a special reference quantity, even though farmers who let their holdings after that date and those who continue to operate their holdings on their own account, albeit with employed labour, are able to do so, is justified by the need to prevent a reference quantity from being claimed for the sole purpose of deriving a purely financial advantage therefrom, owing to the market value which those reference quantities have acquired in the mean time, without there being any real intention on the part of the person concerned of resuming the marketing of milk (see von Deetzen v Hauptzollamt Oldenburg, paragraph 24).