Opinion of Mr Advocate General Darmon

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. This action, brought by the Commission against the Hellenic Republic for failure to fulfil its obligations under the EEC Treaty, is concerned with the favourable credit terms which are allegedly granted by Greek banking institutions for the purchase of Greek agricultural machinery, to the detriment of similar machinery imported from the Member States. The Commission claims that such discrimination constitutes a breach of the prohibition of all quantitative restrictions on imports and measures having equivalent effect, as laid down by Article 30 of the EEC Treaty in conjunction with Article 35 of the Act of Accession, under which:

2. In order to shed light on the facts of this dispute it is necessary to present in chronological order the measures adopted by the Greek authorities and banking services which form the basis of the parties' respective arguments.

3. According to the Commission the Ministerial Directive of 31 March 1982 and the Bank's Circular No 96/82 established credit terms which discriminated according to the origin of the machinery, giving preference to the marketing of Greek-made machinery. Whilst the measures do not compel the purchaser to choose machinery of national manufacture they strongly encourage him to do so in order to qualify for a loan from the Bank, as the main credit institution in the agricultural sector, and necessarily affect goods which would, but for them, have been imported. Thus, although the measures complained of are not expressed in mandatory terms, they have the effect of restricting trade. They are therefore measures having equivalent effect to quantitative restrictions on imports, which are prohibited by Article 30 of the EEC Treaty.

4. The Greek Government contends that in order to abide by the principles of the Treaty it expressly abolished by means of the decisions it adopted in 1981 the discriminatory system created by Decision 749/70. By operation of the rules governing the order in which national legislative measures take priority, the decisions of 1981 rendered the Ministerial Directive of 31 March 1982, and hence Circular No 96/82, totally invalid. Although those instruments were therefore without force, they were expressly revoked by the Ministerial Directive of 23 September 1984 and the ensuing Circular No 238/84 of the Agricultural Bank.

5. For the purpose of defining the precise scope of the dispute, three points should be noted:

6. That conclusion- is not rebutted by the defendant's attempts to demonstrate that, in practice, the measures in question were not applied.

7. Whilst failure on the part of the defendant State to comply with its Treaty obligations appears to be established as regards the Ministerial Directive of 31 March 1982 and Circular No 96/82, the documents laid before the Court do not bear out the Commission's claim that they indicate a comprehensive policy in that area.

8. For all those reasons, I propose that the Court should simply declare that, by making the grant of credits for the purchase of imported agricultural machinery — in this instance, settling-tanks and centrifuges for oil mills — conditional on the production of a ministerial certificate showing that no Greek-made machinery of the same kind is available, the Hellenic Republic has failed to fulfil its obligations under Article 30 of the EEC Treaty.

1 Translated from the French.