Keywords
Summary

Keywords

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1. Measures adopted by the Institutions - Regulations - Regulations prescribing specific measures of supervision - No discretionary power for the Member States - Non-implementation - Justification - Difficulties of application - Not acceptable

2. Agriculture - Common organization of the markets - Functioning of intervention mechanisms - Obligation of the national intervention agencies to accept the products offered - Irrevocability of offers - Justification - Exclusion of speculation

3. Agriculture - Common agricultural policy - Financing by the EAGGF - Principles - Obligation of diligence incumbent on the Member States in the recovery of amounts irregularly paid - Failure to fulfil it - Justification based on the duration of the procedures commenced by economic agents in order to avoid repayment - Not acceptable

(EEC Treaty, Art. 5; Council Regulation No 729/70, Art. 8)

4. Agriculture - Common organization of the markets - System for the provision of securities - Forfeiture of the security - Provisions of national law preventing the security from being declared forfeit - Primacy of the Community rule

Summary

1. Where a regulation lays down specific measures of supervision, the Member States must apply them. They cannot escape that obligation on the ground that a different system of supervision would be more, or just as, efficient. Difficulties in the implementation of the Community rules may not justify a Member State in unilaterally absolving itself from observing its obligations.

2. The rules governing the functioning of the intervention mechanisms entailed in the common organization of the agricultural markets have a specific character compared with normal contractual relations. For this reason, national intervention agencies are obliged to purchase products offered for intervention and fulfilling the conditions laid down for products to qualify for intervention and must therefore accept offers of sale from producers. That impossibility of refusing an offer is matched by the irrevocability of the offer whenever its withdrawal would run counter to the intervention mechanism, particularly in so far as it would be used for speculative purposes, extraneous to the aims pursued by the common organization of the markets.

3. The system established by Article 8 of Regulation No 729/70, which, as regards the financing of the common agricultural policy, constitutes an expression of the general obligation of diligence laid down by Article 5 of the Treaty, requires the Member States to act quickly in order to recover sums paid in breach of the Community rules. National authorities cannot justify a failure to fulfil that obligation by relying on the length of the administrative or judicial proceedings commenced by an economic agent seeking to avoid the repayment demanded.

4. Since the Community provisions relating to a system for the provision of securities under a common organization of the agricultural markets provide for the security furnished by the economic agent to be forfeited if he does not observe his obligations, a provision of national law which, by hindering the forfeiture of the security, prevents the application of Community law and makes possible speculation which Community law is meant to eliminate cannot be applied.