H. Jippes, Afdeling Groningen van de Nederlandse Vereniging tot Bescherming van Dieren and Afdeling Assen en omstreken van de Nederlandse Vereniging tot Bescherming van Dieren v Minister van Landbouw, Natuurbeheer en Visserij.
Date: 2001-07-12
73 As to the Protocol, it is apparent from its very wording that it does not lay down any well-defined general principle of Community law which is binding on the Community institutions. Although it provides that full regard must be had to the welfare requirements of animals in the formulation and implementation of the Community's policy, it limits that obligation to four specific spheres of Community activity and provides that the legislative or administrative provisions and customs of the Member States must be respected as regards, in particular, religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage.
74 Nor is it possible to infer any principle of general application from the Convention, which, as the Court held in its judgment in Compassion in World Farming, cited above, does not impose any clear, precisely defined and unqualified obligation, or from Declaration No 24, which has been superseded by the Protocol and the wording of which is even less binding than that of the Protocol.
78 Thus, the Court has held, in paragraph 17 of the judgment in United Kingdom v Council, that efforts to attain the objectives of the common agricultural policy cannot disregard requirements of public interest, such as the protection ... of the health and life of humans and animals, which the Community institutions must take into account in exercising their powers.
79 The Protocol seeks to reinforce the obligation to take the health and protection of animals into consideration by providing that full regard must be had to the welfare requirements of animals in the formulation and implementation of the Community's policy, particularly in relation to the common agricultural policy, whilst at the same time recognising that differences currently exist between the legislation of the respective Member States and the various sentiments harboured within those Member States. Fulfilment of that obligation can be verified, in particular, in the context of a review of the proportionality of the measure.
The principle of proportionality
80 It should be borne in mind from the outset that the Community legislature enjoys a wide discretionary power in matters concerning the common agricultural policy, corresponding to the political responsibilities given to it by Articles 34 EC to 37 EC. Consequently, judicial review must be limited to verifying that the measure in question is not vitiated by any manifest error or misuse of powers and that the authority concerned has not manifestly exceeded the limits of its power of assessment (see, to that effect, Case C-331/88 Fedesa and Others [1990] ECR I-4023, paragraphs 8 and 14).
81 As to review of proportionality, the principle of proportionality, which is one of the general principles of Community law, requires that measures adopted by Community institutions do not exceed the limits of what is appropriate and necessary in order to attain the objectives legitimately pursued by the legislation in question; when there is a choice between several appropriate measures recourse must be had to the least onerous, and the disadvantages caused must not be disproportionate to the aims pursued (see Fedesa and Others, cited above, paragraph 13, and Joined Cases C-133/93, C-300/93 and C-362/93 Crispoltoni and Others [1994] ECR I-4863, paragraph 41).
82 As regards judicial review of compliance with that principle, bearing in mind the wide discretionary power enjoyed by the Community legislature in matters concerning the common agricultural policy, the legality of a measure adopted in that sphere can be affected only if the measure is manifestly inappropriate in terms of the objective which the competent institution is seeking to pursue (Fedesa and Others, paragraph 14, and Crispoltoni, cited above, paragraph 42).
83 Thus, the criterion to be applied is not whether the measure adopted by the legislature was the only one or the best one possible but whether it was manifestly inappropriate.
84 In addition, it should be recalled that the legality of a Community act cannot depend on retrospective assessment of its efficacy. Where the Community legislature is obliged to assess the future effects of rules to be adopted and those effects cannot be accurately foreseen, its assessment is open to criticism only if it appears manifestly incorrect in the light of the information available to it at the time of the adoption of the rules in question (see, to that effect, Crispoltoni and Others, paragraph 43, and Case C-150/94 United Kingdom v Council [1998] ECR I-7235, paragraph 49).
99 By contrast, although the effect of such a policy is to preclude the possibility of preventive vaccination of animals belonging to an individual or to a specific group of stockfarmers, and whilst that may be regrettable, it does not follow that the policy must be called in question on account of the particular situation of the individual or group concerned. The Council was obliged to have regard to the general state of health of all livestock rather than that of certain individual animals. In the present case, the requirements to be taken into consideration for the purposes of weighing the interests at stake were such as to justify a global assessment of the advantages and drawbacks of the measures contemplated (see, to that effect, Case 5/73 Balkan-Import-Export [1973] ECR 1091, paragraph 22).
120 It is necessary in that connection to take account of the fact that stockfarming represents a source of income for many persons in the Community and that it is in the interests of all persons exporting from the Community not only that foot-and-mouth disease be brought under control as quickly and as effectively as possible but also that outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease and protective vaccination zones remain circumscribed, in order not to prejudice the health status, within the meaning of the Code, of the Member State affected or the perception by third countries of the level of health of the entire Community herd.
127 It must be concluded that those provisions constituted an adequate legal basis for the adoption by the Commission of Decision 2001/246.
The principle of equal treatment
129 It should be noted that, according to settled case-law, the general principle of equality, which is one of the fundamental principles of Community law, precludes comparable situations from being treated in a different manner unless the difference in treatment is objectively justified (see, in particular, Joined Cases C-267/88 to C-285/88 Wuidart and Others [1990] ECR I-435, paragraph 13, and Case C-150/94 United Kingdom v Council, cited above, paragraph 97).