Opinion of Mr Advocate General Mancini

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. The Verwaltungsgericht Frankfurt am Main requests the Court to interpret the provisions of two regulations relating to import and export transactions in beef and veal and to rule upon the validity of a third measure by which the Commission temporarily suspended the advance fixing of export refunds on such goods.

2. Let me first give a brief outline of the relevant Community legislation. The legal basis of Regulation No 387/84 — whereby, as I have said, the Commission suspended the advance fixing of refunds — is Article 5 (4) of Regulation No 885/86 of 28 June 1968 (Official Journal, English Special Edition 1968 (I), p. 237), as amended by Regulation No 1504/76 of 21 June 1976 (Official Journal 1976, L 168, p. 7). In accordance with this provision, in a case of extreme urgency the Commission may derogate from the usual procedure, which provides for the Management Committee to be consulted first (see Article 27 of Regulation No 805/68 of 27 May 1968, Official Journal, English Special Edition 1968 (I), p. 187), and suspend after examination of ... all the information available to it the advance fixing of refunds for a maximum of three working days.

3. In its first question, the national court asks for this latter point to be elucidated: that is to say, it wishes to know whether applications lodged before the period of suspension but on which a decision is to be taken by the authorities during that period must be granted or rejected.

4. The considerations discussed above lead me straight into an examination of the third question, directed at the validity of Regulation No 387/84. The national court, as has been seen, doubts whether there is an adequate statement of the reasons for the measure. It also considers that the factual precondition for the valid adoption of a specific measure such as suspension, namely extreme urgency, was not met in this case.

6. In the light of the conclusions I have come to in points 3 to 5, the last question raised by the national court is devoid of purpose.

7. Having regard to all the foregoing considerations, I propose that the Court reply to the question raised by the Verwaltungsgericht Frankfurt am Main by order of 22 January 1987 in the case pending before that court between Moksel and BALM as follows:

1 Translated from the Italian.