Judgment_paragraph 4 · Herbert Schaible v Land Baden-Württemberg (C-101/12)

4Recitals 1, 3, 7 and 11 in the preamble to Regulation No 21/2004 state:(1) Pursuant to Article 3(1)(c) of Council Directive 90/425/EEC … animals for intra-Community trade have to be identified in accordance with the requirements of Community rules and be registered in such a way that the original or transit holding, centre or organisation can be traced. …...(3) Rules concerning the identification and the registration of ovine and caprine animals in particular have been laid down in [Council] Directive 92/102/EEC [of 27 November 1992 concerning the identification and registration of animals (OJ 1992 L 355, p. 32)]. In respect of ovine and caprine animals, experience, and in particular the foot-and-mouth disease crisis, has shown that the implementation of Directive 92/102/EEC has not been satisfactory and is in need of improvement. It is therefore necessary to lay down more stringent and specific rules, as has already been done for bovine animals with Regulation (EC) No 1760/2000 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 July 2000 establishing a system for the identification and registration of bovine animals [and regarding the labelling of beef and beef products and repealing Council Regulation (EC) No 820/97 (OJ 2000 L 204, p. 1)]....(7) In 1998 the Commission launched a large-scale project on the electronic identification of animals (IDEA), and its final report was completed on 30 April 2002. That project demonstrated that a substantial improvement in ovine and caprine animal identification systems could be achieved by using electronic identifiers for those animals, provided that certain conditions concerning the accompanying measures were fulfilled....(11) In Member States with a relatively small ovine or caprine animal population, the introduction of an electronic identification system may well not be justified. It is therefore advisable to allow such Member States to make the system optional. Provision should also be made for a rapid procedure to adjust the demographic thresholds below which electronic identification may be made optional.’