The Queen v Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, ex parte Dennis Clifford Bostock.
Date: 1994-03-24
12 In so far as Mr Bostock infers from the alleged breach of those general principles that a Member State is under an obligation to adopt national provisions enabling a tenant to obtain compensation, the national court seeks further information on the meaning and scope of the Court' s judgment in Case 5/88 Wachauf v Germany [1989] ECR 2609, which it considers decisive for the resolution of the issues before it.
13 In Wachauf, the Court was asked to interpret Commission Regulation No 1371/84. The national court in that case asked in particular whether that regulation could be interpreted in a manner compatible with the constitutional guarantees that precluded a lessee from being deprived, without compensation, of the fruits of his labour on expiry of the lease.
14 The Court held that the Community regulation in question left the competent national authorities a sufficiently wide margin of appreciation to enable them to apply that regulation without depriving the lessee, on the expiry of the tenancy, of the fruits of his labour and his investments in the let holding without any compensation (paragraph 22), that is, without disregarding the requirements of the protection of fundamental rights in the Community legal order (paragraph 23).
15 The judgment in Wachauf does not therefore address the question, raised by the national court in this case, of the rights to compensation which a tenant may in appropriate circumstances derive from Community law when he surrenders his lease.
16 However, the Court pointed out earlier in its judgment in Wachauf (paragraph 19) that the requirements flowing from the protection of fundamental rights in the Community legal order are also binding on Member States when they implement Community rules and that the Member States must therefore, as far as possible, apply those rules in accordance with those requirements. In that connection the Court held in its judgment in Case C-260/89 ERT v DEP [1991] ECR I-2925, at paragraph 42, that where such national rules fall within the scope of Community law and reference is made to the Court for a preliminary ruling, it must provide all the criteria of interpretation needed by the national court to determine whether those rules are compatible with the fundamental rights whose observance the Court ensures.
19 That argument cannot be accepted. The right to property safeguarded by the Community legal order does not include the right to dispose, for profit, of an advantage, such as the reference quantities allocated in the context of the common organization of a market, which does not derive from the assets or occupational activity of the person concerned (judgment in Case C-44/89 Von Deetzen v Hauptzollamt Oldenburg (Von Deetzen II) [1991] ECR I-5119, paragraph 27).
20 It follows that the protection of the right to property guaranteed by the Community legal order does not require a Member State to introduce a scheme for payment of compensation by a landlord to an outgoing tenant and does not confer a right to such compensation directly on the tenant.
The principle of non-discrimination
23 The second subparagraph of Article 40(3) of the Treaty provides that the common organization of agricultural markets to be established under the common agricultural policy "shall exclude any discrimination between producers or consumers within the Community." That prohibition of discrimination is simply a specific enunciation of the general principle of equality which is one of the fundamental principles of Community law (see, in particular, the judgment in Joined Cases 201/85 and 202/85 Klensch v Secrétaire d' Etat [1986] ECR 3477, paragraph 9).