Court of Justice 7 March 2019, C-2/18 (Lietuvos Respublikos Seimo narių grupė.)

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Advocate General Bobek opines that Article 148(4) of Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013, which requires that all elements of raw milk delivery contracts—including price—be freely negotiated between the parties, precludes national legislation (Lithuanian Law on the prohibition of unfair practices) that obliges raw milk purchasers to apply uniform prices to producers within the same volume-based group and prohibits unjustified price reductions exceeding 3% without prior administrative authorisation. The AG argues that the appropriate analytical framework for assessing EU legislative pre-emption is a specific normative conflict analysis rather than broad field pre-emption, focusing on whether the national rules pursue the same objectives as the EU provision—here, strengthening producers' bargaining power and preventing unfair commercial practices—which the EU legislature already balanced when enacting Article 148(4). Because the national provisions pursue identical objectives to those underlying Article 148(4) and directly conflict with its free-negotiation rule, they cannot be saved by reference to different or additional objectives, nor by analogy to the proportionality-based exception recognised in Scotch Whisky Association.AI