Keywords
Summary

Keywords

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1. Agriculture ° Approximation of laws ° Control of classical swine fever ° Directives 80/217 and 80/1095 ° Requirement for the Member States to provide for a system of compensation for owners whose animals have been slaughtered by order of the national authorities ° None

(Council Directives 80/217 and 80/1095)

2. Community law ° Principles ° Equal treatment ° Discrimination on grounds of nationality ° Rules on control of classical swine fever which do not require Member States to compensate owners whose animals have been slaughtered by order of the national authorities ° No discrimination ° Adoption of a system of compensation by certain Member States in the context of their competence and existence of a requirement to compensate in the context of the control of other animal diseases ° Not relevant

(EEC Treaty, Arts 7 and 40(3), second para.)

Summary

1. By adopting Directives 80/217 and 80/109 introducing measures for the control of classical swine fever, the Community legislature did not intend to regulate the financial aspects of implementation of those measures by the owners of the animals concerned and, specifically, to prescribe measures to compensate those owners. In the absence of Community provisions on the matter, compensation of owners whose pigs have been slaughtered by order of the national authorities under measures to control that disease falls within the competence of each Member State. It follows that the applicable Community rules on control of classical swine fever must be interpreted as not requiring Member States to provide for a system of compensation for owners whose pigs have been slaughtered by order of the national authorities.

2. The Community rules on control of classical swine fever do not disregard the principle of non-discrimination laid down in Article 7 of the Treaty: since they do not require the Member States to provide for a system of compensation for owners whose pigs have been slaughtered by order of the national authorities, they cannot be criticized for having established a system of compensation which differs according to the nationality of the owners whose animals have been slaughtered.

Neither can the fact that certain Member States, in the context of the competence they retain, have adopted a system of compensation for those owners whereas other Member States have not done so constitute infringement of the rules of the Treaty.

Moreover, the fact that the Community has prescribed total or partial compensation for owners of animals slaughtered in order to control animal diseases other than classical swine fever breaches neither the principle of non-discrimination nor even the principle of equal treatment laid down in the second paragraph of Article 40(3) of the Treaty, since the situations at issue are objectively different.