Bundesanstalt für Landwirtschaft und Ernährung v Pfeifer & Langen KG.
Date: 2012-03-29
36. It should be recalled that Article 1(1) of Regulation No 2988/95 lays down ‘general rules … relating to homogenous checks and to administrative measures and penalties concerning irregularities with regard to Community law’ in order, as is made clear from the third recital of the regulation, to counter ‘acts detrimental to the Communities’ financial interests … in all areas’.
37. By adopting Regulation No 2988/95, and in particular the first subparagraph of Article 3(1) thereof, the European Union legislature intended to establish a general rule on limitation which was applicable in that area and by which it intended, first, to define a minimum period applied in all the Member States and, secondly, to waive the possibility of recovering sums wrongly received from the European Union budget after the expiry of a four-year period after the irregularity affecting the payments at issue was committed (Case C‑131/10 Corman [2010] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 39; Joined Cases C‑201/10 and C‑202/10 Ze Fu Fleischhandel and Vion Trading  [2011] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 24; and Case C‑465/10 Chambre de commerce et d’industrie de l’Indre  [2011] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 52).
39. The four-year limitation rule laid down by the first subparagraph of Article 3(1) of Regulation No 2988/95 is, in the absence of sectoral rules providing otherwise, applicable to the irregularities referred to in Article 4 of that regulation which are detrimental to the European Union’s financial interests (see Case C‑278/02 Handlbauer [2004] ECR I‑6171, paragraph 34, and Joined Cases C‑278/07 to C‑280/07 Josef Vosding Schlacht-, Kühl- und Zerlegebetrieb and Others  [2009] ECR I‑457, paragraph 22).
40. Therefore, in the absence, both in Regulation No 1258/1999 and Regulation No 1785/81, of a provision on the relevant limitation period, the recovery of reimbursements of storage costs that were wrongly obtained is liable, pursuant to the first subparagraph of Article 3(1) of Regulation No 2988/95, and in the absence of a suspensory act, to be time-barred after a period of four years from when the irregularity was committed, provided that the Member State in which the irregularities were committed has not made use of the possibility offered to it under Article 3(3) of Regulation No 2988/95 of providing for a longer limitation period (see Josef Vosding Schlacht-, Kühl- und Zerlegebetrieb and Others , paragraph 36, and Corman , paragraph 48).
46. As regards, first, the very principle of the collection of interest being provided for by national law in a situation where European Union law did not provide for the collection of such interest, the Court has held that it was compatible with European Union law, when recovering an advantage wrongly received from the European Union budget, for a Member State to recover, in accordance with its national law, interest which, in the absence at that time of rules requiring it to be paid to the Community, accrued to its own budget (see Case 54/81 Fromme  [1982] ECR 1449, paragraph 8).
48. As regards, secondly, the methods and conditions of collecting such interest, in a situation where, as in the main proceedings, it is on the basis of the national law of a Member State that there is a claim for interest in addition to the recovery of the financial advantage wrongly received from the European Union budget, it is for the national law of that Member State to lay down the methods and conditions applicable to the recovery of that interest, incidental to the recovery of sums wrongly received (see Case 26/74 Roquette frères v Commission  [1976] ECR 677, paragraph 12).