Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1. Appeals - Pleas in law - Admissibility - Conditions - Submission of arguments also raised before the Court of First Instance - No effect

(Art. 225 EC; EC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51, first para.; Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, Art. 112(1)(c))

2. Actions for annulment - Natural or legal persons - Measures of direct and individual concern to them - Question whether there is an absolute bar to proceeding - Seriousness of the infringement by the institution concerned - No effect - Breach of the principle of institutional balance - No effect

(Art. 230, fourth para., EC)

Summary

1. Under Article 225 EC and the first paragraph of Article 51 of the EC Statute of the Court of Justice, an appeal must clearly indicate the contested points of the order of which annulment is sought and the legal arguments on which that claim is specifically based. That requirement is not satisfied by an appeal which, without even setting out arguments specifically intended to identify the alleged error in law by which the contested order is vitiated, confines itself to reproducing the pleas and arguments already put to the Court of First Instance.

An appeal can, however, be based on arguments which have already been presented at first instance in order to show that, by dismissing the pleas in law and arguments presented to it by the appellant, the Court of First Instance infringed Community law, so that the points of law examined at first instance may be considered again in an appeal provided that the appellant contests the way in which the Court of First Instance interpreted or applied Community law.

( see paras 30-31 )

2. Whether an application brought by a natural or legal person against a decision of a Community institution not addressed to that person is inadmissible because the decision is not of direct and individual concern to that person, as provided in the fourth paragraph of Article 230 EC, is a point of admissibility involving public policy considerations which the Community judicature may examine at any time, even of its own motion. The seriousness of the alleged infringement by the institution concerned or the extent of its adverse impact on the observance of fundamental rights could not, in any event, give rise to non-application of the rules for admissibility expressly laid down by the Treaty.

Moreover, although the balance of powers that characterises the institutional structure of the Community constitutes a fundamental guarantee granted by the Treaty in particular to the undertakings and associations of undertakings to which it applies, that statement cannot be interpreted as providing a remedy for any natural or legal person who considers that an act of a Community institution has been adopted in breach of the principle of institutional balance, regardless of whether the act in question is of direct and individual concern to that person.

( see paras 39-41 )