Free movement is sticking point By Ole Ryborg

Date: 18/09/1997

WHILE free movement is recognised as vital to European integration, a question mark now hovers over whether the principle should apply not only to people, capital, goods and services, but also to the humble bee.

Not just any bee, however. A case due to be decided by the European Court of Justice later this year relates specifically to whether the traditional yellow bee has the right to free movement and, in particular, the right to establish itself on Læsø, a small Danish island with only 2,365 inhabitants.

The production of honey is, along with tourism, the only means of making a living on Læsø. Two percent of the island's population are honey producers and their special brown bees - the so-called Læsø bee with the Latin name Apis mellifera mellifera - provide the popular Læsø honey. The island is situated far out in Kattegat, too far from mainland Jutland for any bee to be able to make the trip without the help of modern technology in the form of, say, a boat.

The trouble began in 1993, when Ditlev Bluhme arrived on the island to establish himself with his 20 beehives stocked with traditional mainland yellow bees.

Honey producers on Læsø argued that Bluhme's yellow bees were killing their brown bees, which are recognised by the Danish authorities as a particular species requiring protection.

In 1994, after vociferous complaints from owners of brown bees, the Danish authorities charged Bluhme at the local court in Frederikshavn with breaking Danish law by endangering the brown Læsø bee.

When the case came to court, Bluhme argued that national rules prohibiting him from taking his yellow bees to Læsø were in breach of EU legislation, especially Article 30 of the Treaty of Rome.

The local judge, Mogens Pedersen, responded by transferring the matter to the European Court of Justice, even though the Danish authorities argued that the case was a national issue which had nothing to do with EU law.

Pedersen is well known among lawyers in Denmark for his predilection for transferring cases to the ECJ. On a previous occasion, he forced the Luxembourg-based Court to consider a similarly bizarre case involving a rubber dinghy which, the complainants alleged, was not properly marked as a 'vessel' of the Danish fisheries control authority when its crew boarded a fishing boat to check its catch.

The Læsø case has added significance in the wake of a controversial ECJ judgement in May on the so-called Pistre case.

In that case, a French sausage producer decided to add the word montagne (mountain) to the name of his sausage in an effort to boost sales, even though the delicacy did not come from a mountainous region.

This was deemed illegal by the French authorities under national law. The case was referred to the ECJ, but the French did not expect the Court to deal with the case, arguing that it was clearly a national matter as the Pistre sausage was not sold outside France.

To the surprise of many, the ECJ decided that the case did fall within its jurisdiction and ruled that the producer could use the word montagne. The ruling was significant because it enlarged the Court's interpretation of what are strictly national matters and what comes within the jurisdiction of the ECJ. The case of the yellow versus the brown bee could have similar repercussions.for Danish bees