Court of Justice 10 July 2007, C-260/06 and C-261/06 (Criminal proceedings against Daniel Escalier (C-260/06) and Jean Bonnarel (C-261/06).)

Also known as

In this Opinion of Advocate General Trstenjak in Joined Cases C-260/06 and C-261/06 (Escalier and Bonnarel), the central legal issue is whether a Member State may, consistently with Article 28 EC and the principle of proportionality, require a farmer importing a plant protection product solely for use on his own farm to obtain a simplified marketing authorisation under Directive 91/414/EEC, where a similar reference product is already authorised in the Member State of importation. The Advocate General opines that such a simplified authorisation procedure is permissible and may be made personal to each importer, given the inherent dangers of plant protection products and the monitoring obligations of Member States; however, it cannot be conditioned on the importer assigning a proprietary brand name to the product, nor may the fee charged exceed the actual cost of verifying identity with the reference product. The Advocate General further opines that the Court's judgment in Case C-212/03 Commission v France, concerning personal imports of medicinal products by individuals, is not transposable to plant protection products imported by farmers for farm use, given the materially distinct risk profiles of the two product categories.AI