Opinion of Mr Advocate General Tesauro

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. This reference for a preliminary ruling, like Case 265/87, Schräder (see my Opinion delivered today), concerns the legality of the co-responsibility levy in the cereals sector. Unlike Schräder, however, it is not the validity of the levy scheme as such which is at issue, but rather one specific aspect of that scheme, namely the detailed rules for passing on the levy paid by the first-stage processor of the cereals to prior transactions, as far as supply by the producer.

2. Bearing the above in mind, we now come to an examination of the present reference for a preliminary ruling, which arises from a dispute between Cehave (Netherlands), a cereal processing undertaking, and the Dutch organization which is responsible for collecting the levy (the Hoofdproduktschap).

3. It should be pointed out first of all that the situation in which Cehave finds itself is similar to the situation which the Court considered and gave a ruling on in its judgment in Case 64/87, Versele-Laga v Robegra, [1988] ECR 1961.

4. The considerations which I have set out above would appear prima facie to enable the national court's third and fourth questions to be answered easily.

5. Thus it appears that the system is seriously malfunctioning and is not capable of ensuring either that the levy is neutral in its effect as regards intermediaries, or that the whole amount of the levy is passed on to the producer.

6. If that interpretation is accepted by the Court, the problem then arises of how to define the effects of that declaration.

1 Original language: Italian.