C-262/87

OPINION OF MR VAN GERVEN — CASE 262/87

2. In accordance with the general principles cases when Article 2 of Regulation No which underlie the Community's institu­ 729/70 provides that only refunds tional structure and govern the relations granted in accordance with the between the Community and the Community rules may be financed by the Member States, it is for the Member EAGGF and, moreover, it is primarily its States, by virtue of Article 5 of the responsibility to bring fishing to an end if Treaty, to ensure that Community regu­ the national quota has been exhausted. If lations, particularly those concerning the it encounters practical difficulties in the common agricultural policy, are setting up effective supervisory implemented within their territories (see machinery, it is for the Member State to judgment of 21 September 1983 in overcome them by adopting appropriate Joined Cases 205 to 215/82 Deutsche measures. Milchkontor v Germany [1983] ECR 2633). 3. When the Commission refuses to charge certain expenditure to the EAGGF on A Member State cannot escape from that the ground that it was incurred as a obligation in the context of the common result of breaches of Community rules organization of the markets in fishery imputable to a Member State, it is for products and grant export refunds in that Member State to show that the respect of quantities caught in excess of conditions for obtaining the financing the national quota on the ground that the refused by the Commission are filled (see Community rules contain no provision judgment of 24 March 1988 in Case expressly providing for the possibility of 347/85 United Kingdom v Commission refusing to pay export refunds in such [1988] ECR 1749).

the general requirements of the fisheries may not rely on the principle of legal policy. certainty since the fixing of national quotas was certainly not unforeseeable but was the outcome at the Community level of a long The Opinion then considers whether, by process of development at the level of public analogy with what the Court decided in international law. Moreover, the principle of regard to 1981 and 1982 in its judgments of legal certainty does not necessarily play the 15 December 1987 in Cases 326/85 and same role in relations between the auth­ 237/86, which are similar to this case, there orities of the Member States and the were special circumstances in 1983 which, Community as it does in the relations by virtue of the principles of legal certainty between authorities and individuals. and the protection of legitimate expec­ Reliance on the principle of legal certainty tations, attenuate the general rules appears to be all the more unjustified in this applicable, according to which financing is case because the Member State concerned to be refused. The reply to that question is was itself in a position to put an end to the in the negative and it is based inter alia on legal uncertainty by adopting preparatory the view that the Member State concerned measures in good time.

The application for annulment should be dismissed and the applicant ordered to pay the costs.