Opinion of Mr Advocate General Darmon

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. The European Economic Community is gradually developing a common transport policy pursuant to the provisions of Article 74 et seq. of the EEC Treaty. To do so it is necessary that it should be able to assess precisely the volume of transport in the Community. According to Article 213 of the Treaty, the Commission may, within the limits and under conditions laid down by the Council, collect all requisite information. It was for that purpose that Council Directive No 78/546 of 12 June 1978 was adopted, on statistical returns in respect of carriage of goods by road, as part of regional statistics, so that, as its first recital states, there might be a better knowledge of. the scale and development of the carriage of goods by road by means of vehicles registered in the Community.

2. The Italian Republic stands accused of having failed to fulfil its obligations under the aforesaid directive. The Commission contends that it failed to compile the statistics of the carriage of goods by road as provided for in the directive.

3. Objectively speaking, the failure to fulfil its obligations with which the defendant State is accused is not denied. It is nevertheless common ground that at the date of the hearing it had still not satisfied its obligations under the directive.

4. My opinion is therefore that the Court should declare that:

1 Translated from the French.