Opinion of Mr Advocate General VerLoren van Themaat delivered on 23 October 1984

1 Translated from the Dutch.

2 Those two conclusions naturally do not alter the fact that it is in any case apparent from the fourth paragraph of the Preamble to the EEC Treaty that the four freedoms provided for in the Treaty are also intended to guarantee fair competition. However, the Treaty provisions concerned employ different criteria, simpler to apply, on this point than Articles 85 to 92. Conversely, it was apparent during the preparation and application of Regulation No 17 that the most persuasive argument for the acceptance of the relatively strict rules of Article 85 in conjunction with Regulation No 17, particularly in Member States in which no general prohibition was applied at national level in relation to agreements restricting competition, was always the consideration the traders could not be permitted to set up obstacles to trade between States which restricted competition and which the Member States themselves were not allowed to apply. As long as the market is less united than in the United States, for example, the objective of the removal of existing obstacles will therefore also continue to have a certain priority over efforts to eliminate other forms of restriction of competition in the application of Article 85. Judgments of the Court confirm this. That the second conclusion is of limited real significance in the present case will be apparent from the remainder of this opinion.