Opinion of Mr Advocate-General Capotorti

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. The recurrent currency fluctuations in recent years have, in the application of Community legislation, especially in agricultural matters, given rise to a number of disputes involving questions of interpretation which this Court has on several occasions been called upon to resolve. On this occasion, the High Court of the Republic of Ireland is seeking an interpretation of Community provisions relating to the granting of aids to manufacturers of casein or caseinates from skimmed milk with a view to determining at which point in time the amount of aid payable to an Irish producer must be calculated. Since the rate of exchange between the Irish pound and the unit of account changed on 7 October 1974, the determination of this point in time is of paramount importance when, as in the present case, the conditions upon which the application of the regulations on aids depends were fulfilled in part before and in part after the alteration in the rate of exchange.

2. The granting of aid for skimmed milk produced in the Comunity and processed into casein was introduced by Regulation (EEC) No 804/68 of the Council of 27 June 1968 on the common organization of the market in milk and milk products. Under Article 11 of the said regulation it was a condition of aid that such milk and the casein produced from it reach certain standards; general rules governing the aid and, in particular, the conditions under which such aid may be granted were, however, left to be determined by the Council in a later regulation. Finally, the Commission was made responsible, subject to the prior Opinion of the Management Committee for Milk and Milk Products, for the detailed rules for the application of the article (Article 11 (3) and of the said regulation).

3. In order to resolve this issue, account must be taken of another group of Community rules on conditions for alterations to the value of the unit of account used for the common agricultural policy. In this connexion, Regulation (EEC) No 653/68 of the Council of 30 May 1968 entrusted the Council itself with the task of adopting where necessary rules to be applied where there is an alteration in the relationship between the parity of a Member State's currency and the value of the unit of account (Article 6 (1) (c)). It was followed by Regulation (EEC) No 1134/68 of 30 July 1968 of which the provisions of Article 4 (2) and Article 6 are of relevance here.

4. The central issue in this case must, therefore, be expressed in a manner related to the terms of Article 6 of Regulation (EEC) No 1134/68 in the versions other than the English one. It is necessary to establish the date on which il fatto generatore del credito relativo all'importo dell'operazione (the event by virtue of which the amount involved in the transaction becomes due), took place. In the present case, il fatto generatore (the event by virtue of which, etc.) is not to be determined in accordance with the law of the Member State concerned: this is because of the existence of the Community regulations which I have already had occasion to review and to which priority must be given in accordance with the said Article 6.

5. For all the foregoing reasons I recommend that the Court should answer the question referred to it by the High Court of Ireland for a preliminary ruling under Article 177 of the EEC Treaty by stating that the amount of aid due to producers of casein or caseinates under Article 2 of Regulation (EEC) No 987/68 of the Council must be calculated on the basis of the rate of exchange between the unit of account and the national currency in which payment is to be made which was in force at the date when the products were marketed.

1 Translated from the Italian.