Zuckerfabrik Jülich AG v Hauptzollamt Aachen and Saint Louis Sucre SNC and Others v Directeur général des douanes et droits indirects and Receveur principal des douanes et droits indirects de Gennevilliers.
Date: 2008-05-08
31. That provision, although successively replaced by Article 33(1) of Council Regulation (EC) No 2038/1999 of 13 September 1999 on the common organisation of the markets in the sugar sector (OJ 1999 L 252, p. 1) and by Article 15(1) of Regulation No 1260/2001, has remained essentially unchanged.
41. As the Commission essentially contends, if the objective of Regulation No 1260/2001 had been to base the calculation of production levies on the budgetary costs of refunds, it would have sufficed to calculate those levies from the total loss based on export and production refunds.
43. It follows that the method for calculating the estimated total loss is designed, in any event, to establish, in a forward-looking and conventional way, the losses caused by disposing of surplus Community production.
44. If quantities exported without refunds were included in the account of consumption within the Community, that account would be overvalued. As a consequence, the exportable surplus would be underestimated. Thus, there is a risk that the objective pursued by the system of the self‑financing of the costs of disposing of surpluses – which, from the introduction of that system by Regulation No 1785/81, has been to ensure, in a fair yet efficient way, that the producers themselves meet those costs in full, and the application of which by the Commission has always been based on a definition of exportable surplus which includes sugar exports regardless of whether they benefit from a refund – would not be achieved. There is therefore a risk that the maintenance of the system would be liable to be undermined, contrary to recital 12 in the preamble to Regulation No 1260/2001.
46. Pursuant to Article 15(1)(d) of Regulation No 1260/2001, the average loss is equal to the difference between the total amount of refunds and the total amount of levies on the total tonnage of export obligations in question to be fulfilled during the marketing year concerned.
49. In the context of the exports referred to in Regulation No 1260/2001, it is necessary, in the absence of specific reasons to the contrary, to interpret the concept of ‘export obligations to be fulfilled during the current marketing year’ which appears in Article 15(1)(d) of that regulation in a manner which is consistent with Article 22(1) of that regulation, which refers to the export obligation.
50. Thus, in the present context, that concept has the effect of covering any quantity of products falling under Article 15 of Regulation No 1260/2001 which is intended for export from the Community.
51. In that regard, it should be pointed out that, contrary to the contentions of the numerous interested parties which submitted observations in the proceedings, the question whether or not the quantities of products for export attract export refunds is not relevant in the light of the concept of ‘export obligations to be fulfilled during the current marketing year’. That concept covers only the quantities of products for which export licences have been issued.
57. It follows from recitals 9, 11 and 12 in the preamble to Regulation No 1260/2001 that the system introduced by that regulation seeks to make producers meet in full, in a fair yet efficient way, the cost of disposing of the surpluses of Community production in accordance with the principle of self‑financing.
58. As the Court has ruled, the system for financing the costs of disposal is designed in such a way that the A quota, which represents internal consumption, attracts only a minimal levy whereas the B quota, which is mainly for export, is subject to a much higher levy in order to finance the necessary refunds whilst discouraging production (see Case 250/84 Eridania zuccherifici nazionali and Others  [1986] ECR 117, paragraph 19).
59. The dissuasive effect which, according to the ruling of the Court in Eridania zuccherifici nazionali and Others , the system for financing the costs of disposal is liable to have on producers derives, as the Advocate General has noted at point 60 of her Opinion, from the very fact that the production levy imposes on producers the burden of financing the costs of disposing of Community production surpluses.
60. With the exception of the largely theoretical case in which all exports benefit from refunds, the system introduced by the Commission, inasmuch as it resulted, in practice, in fixing a priori the total loss at an amount greater than that of the costs linked to refunds, goes beyond the objective of Regulation No 1260/2001, and in particular beyond that of the equitable financing of the costs of disposing of Community production surpluses, noted at paragraph 57 of the present judgment.
61. In the light of the foregoing, the answer to the question referred must be that Article 15(1)(d) of Regulation No 1260/2001 is to be interpreted as meaning that all the quantities of exported products which fall under that article, regardless of whether or not refunds have actually been paid, are to be taken into account for the purpose of calculating the estimated average loss per tonne of product.
The validity of Regulations No 1837/2002, No 1762/2003 and No 1775/2004