Opinion of Mr Advocate General Darmon

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. ETA Fabriques d'Ébauches SA (hereinafter referred to as ETA), a company incorporated under Swiss law, represented since December 1984 by Swatch SA for marketing purposes and for the servicing of the guarantee, mass-produces inexpensive quartz watches and markets them in the various Member States through agents, that is, exclusive distributors of the product in the territory allotted to them.

2. The question falls within the limits of the Court's jurisdiction in proceedings for a preliminary ruling.

3. The plaintiff in the main proceedings states at once that it has no intention of hindering parallel imports of the watches which it manufactures. However, it takes the view that in such cases the guarantee accompanying the products should not be provided. It maintains that the duty to provide a guarantee, which is an integral part of the distribution agreement, is of a contractual nature and therefore relates only to the watches sold through its network of distributors.

4. In my view, the interpretation of Community law in this case must be guided by two sets of considerations.

5. Since the arguments put forward by ETA to justify its conduct cannot be accepted, it follows — and the oral proceedings were quite revealing in this respect — that the differential treatment accorded by ETA in the matter of the guarantee is governed by a very different logic.

6. For those reasons, I propose that the Court should give the following answer to the question submitted by the Tribunal de commerce, Brussels:

1 Translated from the French.