William Dowling v Ireland, Attorney General and Minister for Agriculture and Food.
Date: 1992-10-22
12 That limitation was declared invalid by the Court in its judgment in Case C-189/89 Karl Spagl v Hauptzollamt Rosenheim [1990] ECR I-4539. In that judgment, the Court held the Community legislature entitled to validly establish a cut-off date by reference to the expiry of the period of non-marketing or conversion of the persons concerned, with a view to excluding from the benefit of Article 3a those producers who had not delivered milk during all or part of the reference year in question for reasons unconnected with the non-marketing or conversion undertaking. On the other hand, by virtue of the principle of the protection of legitimate expectations, the cut-off date could be laid down in such a way that it had the effect of also excluding from the benefit of Article 3a producers whose failure to deliver milk for the whole or part of the reference year derived from the fulfilment of an undertaking given under Regulation No 1078/77 (paragraph 13).
15 Article 3(3) of Regulation No 857/84, as supplemented by Article 3 of Regulation No 1546/88, allows producers, in certain exceptional circumstances, to choose a reference year other than that adopted by the Member State concerned within the period 1981 to 1983. However, that choice is expressly limited to one of the other two years within that period, with the result that milk deliveries outside that period cannot be taken into account (see the judgment in Case 84/87 Marcel Erpelding v Secrétaire d' Etat à l' Agriculture et à la Viticulture [1988] ECR 2647, paragraphs 18 and 19).
17 As the Court held in Erpelding (above, paragraph 18), the structure and purpose of the rules indicate that they contain an exhaustive list of the situations in which reference quantities or individual quantities may be granted and that they set out precise rules as to how those quantities are to be determined. Even in the factual circumstances described by the national court in its question, none of the applicable Community provisions provides for the possibility of granting a reference quantity to producers whose period of non-marketing or conversion expired before 1 January 1983 and who did not deliver milk in 1981 or 1982.
19 As far as the principle of the protection of legitimate expectations is concerned, it must be remembered that, as the Court has held (see in particular the judgment in Case C-177/90 Kuehn v Landwirtschaftkammer Weser-Ems [1992] ECR I-35, paragraph 15), where a producer has been encouraged by a Community measure to suspend the marketing of milk 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. On the other hand, the principle of the protection of legitimate expectations does not preclude the imposition of restrictions on a producer under a system like the additional levy system by reason of the fact that he did not market milk during a given period prior to the entry into force of that system for reasons unconnected with his non-marketing or conversion undertaking.
21 The rules, thus construed, likewise do not infringe the prohibition of discrimination laid down in Article 40(3) of the Treaty, which is a specific expression of the general principle of equality. That principle precludes comparable situations from being treated in a different manner unless the difference in treatment is objectively justified (see Erpelding, paragraph 29).
23 That result is arrived at because the rules in question do not allow account to be taken of a reference year outside the period 1981 to 1983 or of a theoretical quantity calculated on the basis of milk deliveries made during a period prior to 1981. As the Court held in Erpelding (paragraph 30), such an exclusion is justified by the need to limit the number of years which may be taken as reference years, in the interests of both legal certainty and the effectiveness of the additional levy system.