Opinion of Mr Advocate General Darmon

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. By its Regulation No 32/82 of 7 January 1982, the Commission laid down the conditions for granting special export refunds for beef and veal (Official Journal 1982, L 4, p. 11).

2. It was on the basis of those provisions that Alexander Moksel Import-Export GmbH & Co. Handels-KG (hereinafter referred to as Moksel), a meat exporter, applied for and, initially, obtained refunds for various consignments of beef and veal intended for export from the Federal Republic of Germany to the Soviet Union.

3. In order to clarify the background to this problem, it should be noted that Article 1 (1) of Regulation No 32/82 makes the grant of the special refunds conditional upon compliance with the specific conditions laid down in the regulation.

4. According to the Commission, both a literal interpretation of Regulation No 32/82 and the concern to ensure effective control require that the animals should be slaughtered and the export formalities completed in one and the same Member State.

5. I cannot subscribe to that interpretation. Neither the letter nor the scheme of Regulation No 32/82, on the one hand, nor the control requirements, on the other, appear to make the grant of the special refunds conditional upon the animals having been slaughtered and the export formalities having been completed in the same Member State.

6. As the Commission has emphasized, Regulation No 32/82 did not introduce a Community control procedure. Article 3 empowers the Member States to lay down the conditions for checking the products and for issuing the certificate. The measures adopted are intended to

7. Merely for the sake of completeness, I shall briefly consider the last set of arguments put forward by the Commission.

1 Translated from the French.