Agricola Tabacchi Bonavicina Snc di Mercati Federica (ATB) and Others v Ministero per le Politiche Agricole, Azienda di Stato per gli interventi nel mercato agricolo (AIMA) and Mario Pittaro.
Date: 2000-07-06
29 In that respect it should be borne in mind that Article 177 of the EC Treaty establishes direct cooperation between the Court of Justice and the national courts by way of a non-contentious procedure excluding any initiative of the parties who are merely invited to be heard in the course of that procedure. Under Article 177 it is for the national court, and not the parties to the main action, to bring a matter before the Court of Justice. Since the right to determine the questions to be brought before the Court devolves upon the national court alone, the parties may not change the tenor of the questions (see, in particular, Case 44/65 Hessische Knappschaft v Singer [1965] ECR 965, at 970 and 971).
30 As the Commission has rightly pointed out, the Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale del Lazio has not asked the Court for a preliminary ruling on the validity of Regulation No 1550/95.
31 In those circumstances, there is no need to consider the validity of that regulation.
The validity of Regulations Nos 711/95, 1066/95 and 1067/95
35 In that regard, both ATB and Others and the Italian Government point to the statement in paragraph 18 of the judgment in Case C-368/89 Crispoltoni v Fattoria Autonoma Tabacchi di Città de Castello [1991] ECR I-3695 (Crispoltoni I), that the purpose of setting a production quota cannot be achieved if the relevant measures are adopted at a late stage when decisions regarding the extent of the area to be cultivated have already been taken and planting out has already taken place.
37 It must be observed at the outset that, whilst the protection of legitimate expectations is one of the fundamental principles of the Community, economic operators cannot have a legitimate expectation that an existing situation which is capable of being altered by the Community institutions in the exercise of their discretion will be maintained; this is particularly true in an area such as the common organisation of the markets, the object of which entails constant adjustments to meet changes in the economic situation. It follows that economic operators cannot claim a vested right to the maintenance of an advantage which they derive from the establishment of the common organisation of the markets and which they enjoyed at a given time (see, in particular, Joined Cases C-133/93, C-300/93 and C-362/93 Crispoltoni and Others v Fattoria Autonoma Tabacchi and Donatab [1994] ECR I-4863, paragraphs 57 and 58; and Case C-372/96 Pontillo v Donatab [1998] ECR I-5091, paragraphs 22 and 23).
38 That is particularly true in a case such as that in point in the main proceedings, where the applicable Community legislation, namely Article 9 of Regulation No 2075/92, provided that the new system of allocating quotas directly among the producers should be applied by all the Member States by, at the latest, the 1995 harvest, since the Member States were only able to continue allocating quotas to first processors on a transitional basis in respect of the 1993 and 1994 harvests (on the last point, see Joined Cases C-254/94, C-255/94 and C-269/94 Fattoria Autonoma Tabacchi and Others v Ministero dell'Agricoltora e delle Foreste and Others [1996] ECR I-4235, paragraph 36).
39 It is true that, in paragraphs 20 and 21 of Crispoltoni I, the Court held that Council Regulation No 1114/88 of 25 April 1988 amending Regulation (EEC) No 727/70 on the common organisation of the market in raw tobacco (OJ 1988 L 110, p. 35) and Council Regulation No 2268/88 of 19 July 1988 fixing, for the 1988 harvest, the norm and intervention prices and the premiums granted to purchasers of leaf tobacco, the derived intervention prices for baled tobacco, the reference qualities, the production areas and the guaranteed maximum quantities and amending Regulation (EEC) No 1975/87 (OJ 1988 L 199, p. 20), were invalid in so far as they laid down a maximum guaranteed quantity for tobacco of the Bright variety harvested in 1988. In arriving at this conclusion, the Court observed that, although the economic operators concerned must have considered that measures to limit any increase in tobacco production in the Community and to discourage the production of varieties that were difficult to dispose of were foreseeable, they were entitled to expect that they would be notified in good time of any measures affecting their investments.
40 That was not the case as regards the regulations at issue in Crispoltoni I. In paragraphs 14 to 16 of its judgment, the Court found that Regulations Nos 1114/88 and 2268/88 had retroactive effect in so far as they provided for reductions in the intervention prices and premiums if the maximum guaranteed quantity for tobacco of the Bright variety harvested in 1988 was exceeded and in so far as they were published, respectively, at the end of April and the end of July 1988, at a time when the sowing for the current year had already been done and the planting out of the young plants had also been completed.
41 However, as was made clear in paragraph 45 of the judgment in Case C-324/96 Petridi v Simou and Others [1998] ECR I-1333, in Crispoltoni I the Court ruled on the retroactive application to the 1988 tobacco harvest of the system of maximum guaranteed quantity with which the economic operators concerned were unfamiliar, both in regard to the nature of the new measures for the organisation of the tobacco market in the Community and in respect of the date on which those measures were to come into effect.
53 Even supposing that the amendments made by Regulation No 1067/95 were to bring about a reduction in the premiums paid to ATB and Others, it would be sufficient to note, as stated in paragraph 37 above, that the economic operators in question cannot have a legitimate expectation that an existing situation which is capable of being altered by the Community institutions in the exercise of their discretion would be maintained; this is particularly true in an area such as the common organisation of the markets the object of which entails constant adjustments to meet changes in the economic situation. That is the case as regards the fixing of premiums which can be reduced from one year to the next (see Pontillo, paragraph 28).