Report for the Hearing delivered in Joined Cases 196/88 to 198/88

I — Facts and written procedure

1. The relevant Community provisions

2. The French rules implementing the Community provisions

The national provisions necessary for the implementation of the Community rules were adopted in France, first, by means of Decree No 84-661 of 17 July 1984 on the control of production of cows' milk and laying down detailed rules for recovering an additional levy from buyers and producers of cows' milk (JORF, 21.7.1984, p. 2373), and then by a decree of 22 November 1984 determining reference quantities for purchasers of milk in respect of the period from 2 April 1984 to 31 March 1985 (JORF, 29.11.1984, p. 3660) and by the decree of 10 July 1985 determining reference quantities for purchasers of milk in respect of the period from 1 April 1985 to 31 March 1986 (JORF, 14.7.1985, p. 7979).

3. The main proceedings

The main proceedings are between milk producers in the department of the Côtes du Nord and the Cooperative agricole laitière (Agricultural Dairy Cooperative) Loudéac and the Laiterie coopérative (Dairy Cooperative) Trieux respectively. The cooperatives imposed levies on the producers by reason of the fact that they had exceeded the reference quantities which had been allocated to them pursuant to the Community provisions relating to the additional levy on milk.

The milk producers challenge the levies imposed and maintain that the French rules pursuant to which their reference quantities were determined do not correctly apply the relevant Community provisions. More particularly, they argue that, by taking 1983 as the sole reference year for determining the reference quantities and by granting a uniform quantity of 9500 litres of milk for all producers operating a development plan, France has infringed the aforementioned Council Regulation No 857/84, and in particular Article 3 thereof, regard being had to the principles of nondiscrimination and the protection of legitimate expectations.

In order to enable it to assess those arguments, the Cour d'appel, Rennes, to which the milk producers had appealed after having their actions dismissed at first instance, stayed the proceedings and referred the following questions, which are identical in all three cases, to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling under Article 177 of the EEC Treaty:

4. Procedure before the Court

The judgments making the reference were received at the Court Registry on 20 July 1988.

By an order dated 17 October 1988, the Court decided to join the present cases for the purposes of the procedure and the judgment.

In accordance with Article 20 of the Protocol on the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Communities, written observations were submitted by the applicants in the three sets of national proceedings, represented by Mr Pitois-Sillard, Mr Olive, Mr Cabot and Mr Dohollou, of the Rennes Bar, by the French Government, represented by Mrs E. Belliard and Mr Géraud de Bergues, acting as Agents, and by the Commission of the European Communities, represented by G. Lawrence and P. Hetsch, members of its Legal Department, acting as Agents.

After hearing the report of the Judge-Rapporteur and the views of the Advocate General, the Court decided, on 1 February 1989, to assign the cases to the Third Chamber in accordance with Article 95 of the Rules of Procedure and to open the oral procedure without any preparatory enquiry.

II — Written observations

1. The first question

2. The second question

3. The third question

1 Language of lhe case: French.