Keywords
Summary

Keywords

Free movement of goods - Quantitative restrictions - Measures having equivalent effect - National legislation under which sales rounds of foodstuffs in a given administrative district are reserved to operators established in that district or in an adjacent municipality - Not permissible - Whether justifiable - No justification

(EC Treaty, Art. 30 (now, after amendment, Art. 28 EC))

Summary

$$Article 30 of the Treaty (now, after amendment, Article 28 EC) precludes national legislation which provides that bakers, butchers and grocers may not make sales on rounds in a given administrative district unless they also carry on their trade at a permanent establishment situated in that administrative district or in an adjacent municipality, where they offer for sale the same goods as they do on rounds.

Such legislation, which relates to the selling arrangements for certain goods - in that it lays down the geographical areas in which each of the operators concerned may sell his goods by that method - does not affect in the same manner the marketing of domestic products and that of products from other Member States even though it applies to all operators trading in the national territory. Consequently, it is capable of hindering intra-Community trade in so far as it impedes access to the market of the Member State of importation for products from other Member States more than it impedes access for domestic products. That conclusion is not affected by the fact that, in each part of the national territory, the legislation affects both the sale of products from other parts of the national territory and the sale of products imported from other Member States. For a national measure to be categorised as discriminatory or protective for the purposes of the rules on the free movement of goods, it is not necessary for it to have the effect of favouring national products as a whole or of placing only imported products at a disadvantage and not national products.

Such legislation cannot be justified by objectives relating to the protection of the supplying of goods at short distance to the advantage of local businesses, since aims of a purely economic nature cannot justify a barrier to the fundamental principle of the free movement of goods; nor can it be justified in terms of the need to protect public health, since that objective can be attained by measures that have effects less restrictive of intra-Community trade.

(see paras 24-25, 27, 29, 31-33, 36-37 and operative part)