Keywords
Summary

Keywords

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1. Preliminary rulings - Jurisdiction of the Court - Limits - Question obviously not relevant

(EEC Treaty, Art. 177)

2. Agriculture - Common organization of the markets - Raw tobacco - Fixing, for a given variety and harvest, of a maximum guaranteed quantity after commencement of cultivation - Retroactive effect - Breach of principles of legal certainty and protection of legitimate expectations - Unlawful

(Council Regulations No 1114/88 and No 2268/88)

Summary

1. A request for a preliminary ruling 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 the subject-matter of the main action.

2. Regulation No 1114/88 amending Regulation No 727/70 on the common organization of the market in raw tobacco and Regulation No 2268/88 fixing, for the 1988 harvest, the norm and intervention prices and the premiums granted to purchasers of leaf tobacco, the derived intervention prices for baled tobacco, the reference qualities, the production areas and the guaranteed maximum quantities and amending Regulation No 1975/87 are invalid in so far as they lay down a maximum guaranteed quantity for tobacco of the "Bright" variety harvested in 1988.

The retroactivity of those two regulations, which, although not expressly laid down, follows, in the case of Regulation No 1114/88, from the fact that it was published after the operators had made their decisions regarding production for the current year and, in the case of Regulation No 2268/88, from the fact that it was published when those decisions had been put into effect, is at variance with the principle of legal certainty and can be permitted only in exceptional cases, since the purpose of those two regulations, namely to curb tobacco production and to discourage the production of varieties which are difficult to dispose of, could no longer be achieved for the year in question when they were published. Furthermore, the legitimate expectations of the operators concerned were not respected, in so far as the measures adopted, although foreseeable, were introduced at a time when they could no longer be taken into account in formulating investment decisions.