Antonio Crispoltoni v Fattoria autonoma tabacchi di Città di Castello.
Date: 1991-07-11
10 However, such a particularity does not allow the Court' s jurisdiction to be called in question. As the Court has consistently held (see, inter alia, judgment in Joined Cases C-297/88 and C-197/89 Dzodzi v Belgium [1990] ECR I-3763, paragraph 34), it is solely for the national courts before which the dispute has been brought, and which must bear the responsibility for the subsequent judicial decision, to determine in the light of the special features of each case both the need for a preliminary ruling in order to enable them to deliver judgment and the relevance of the questions which they submit to the Court.
11 A request from a national court may be rejected only if it is quite obvious that the interpretation of Community law or the examination of the validity of a rule of Community law sought by that court bears no relation to the actual nature of the case or to the subject-matter of the main action (see, in particular, the Order in Case C-286/88 Falciola v Comune di Pavia [1990] ECR I-191). That is not so in the present case.
Substance
14 It follows from the order for reference that tobacco of the "Bright" variety, which, according to Annex III to Regulation No 2268/88, is produced exclusively in Italy, is sown in special seed beds during February and the young plants are transplanted into the field before the end of April. It is the latter operation which involves the greatest expense, and it is at that time that the farmers must decide on the size of the areas to be cultivated.
15 Regulation No 1114/88 was published on 29 April 1988, that is after the farmers had made their decisions regarding production for the current year, and Regulation No 2268/88 was published on 26 July 1988, at a time when those decisions had been put into effect.
16 It must therefore be accepted that those regulations 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.
17 In that respect, the Court has consistently held (see, inter alia, judgments in Case 98/78 Racke v Hauptzollamt Mainz [1979] ECR 69, paragraph 20, and Case 99/78 Decker v Hauptzollamt Landau [1979] ECR 101, paragraph 8) that, although in general the principle of legal certainty precludes a Community measure from taking effect from a point in time before its publication, it may exceptionally be otherwise where the purpose to be achieved so demands and where the legitimate expectations of those concerned are duly respected. That case-law also applies where the retroactivity is not expressly laid down by the measure itself but is the result of its content.
18 As the first recital in the preamble to Regulation No 1114/88 states, the purpose of setting a maximum guaranteed quantity is to curb any increase in the Community' s tobacco production and at the same time to discourage the growing of varieties which are difficult to dispose of. That purpose could not be achieved, with respect to the 1988 harvest of tobacco of the "Bright" variety, by the regulations published at the end of April and July of that year. By then the decisions regarding the extent of the area to be cultivated had been made, the planting out had already taken place and, according to the order for reference, the harvest had begun long before the publication of Regulation No 2268/88.
20 In the absence of any other reason indicated in the preambles to Regulations No 1114/88 and No 2268/88, it must therefore be held that the first condition for the retroactivity of those regulations to be permitted, namely that the purpose to be achieved so demands, is not fulfilled and, consequently, those regulations are invalid in so far as they lay down a maximum guaranteed quantity for tobacco of the "Bright" variety harvested in 1988.
21 Furthermore, the contested rules have infringed the legitimate expectations of the economic operators concerned. Although those operators must have considered that measures to limit any increase in tobacco production in the Community and to discourage the production of varieties which were difficult to dispose of were foreseeable, they were entitled to expect that they would be notified in good time of any measures having effects on their investments. However, that was not the case.