Appeal brought on 3 March 2015 by Internationaler Hilfsfonds e.V. against the order of the General Court (Second Chamber) of 9 January 2015 in Case T-482/12 Internationaler Hilfsfonds v Commission

(Case C-103/15 P)

(2015/C 302/16)

Language of the case: German

Parties

Appellant: Internationaler Hilfsfonds e.V. (represented by: H.-H. Heyland, Rechtsanwalt)

Other party to the proceedings: European Commission

Form of order sought

The appellant claims that the Court should:

Pleas in law and main arguments

The appeal is brought pursuant to Article 56 of the Statute of the Court of Justice against the order of the General Court of 9 January 2015 in Case T-482/12. In that order, the General Court dismissed Internationaler Hilfsfonds e.V.’s application brought against the European Commission as inadmissible on the ground of incomplete production of documents and pleas in law. However, in accordance with the requirements laid down in the judgment of 22 May 2012 in Case T-300/10, the Commission was, apart from some exceptions, obliged to provide the appellant with complete documentation from the file concerning the LIEN-Contract 97-2011. Those requirements were not complied with: instead, the Commission provided numerous documents with blank spaces and passages that had been struck out, and failed entirely to produce a number of documents. In its application of 27 October 2012, Internationaler Hilfsfonds e.V. had comprehensively set out its objections, providing and referring to the letter of 27 July 2012 that it had addressed to the Commission and in which it requested the latter to take the consequential measures necessary pursuant to Article 266 TFEU, read in conjunction with the sixth paragraph of Article 254 TFEU. It also provided the General Court with the correspondence between the parties that resulted from that letter and, in addition, annexed that correspondence to its application.

The appellant submits that, in its order which is the subject of the present appeal, the General Court alleged that the application did not satisfy the formal requirements laid down in Article 44(1)(c) of the Rules of Procedure and that the pleas in law had not been sufficiently stated. The appellant disputes this, submitting that it had not only succinctly set out the background to the application, the grounds thereof and all relevant information but had also done so in detail, which was by itself adequate to enable the General Court to comprehend the subject-matter of the action. The appellant takes issue, in particular, with the fact that the General Court also dismissed, as being inadmissible, its alternative head of claim requesting the General Court to annul in part the Commission’s decision of 28 August 2012 (by which the Commission handed over the incomplete documentation) — although in that regard the General Court took cognisance of the corresponding plea in law.

In addition, the appellant claims that the General Court regarded the documents submitted by the appellant in annex form as being mere general references and did not take cognisance of them, even though they helped to clarify the pleas in law and documents in its application and for that reason constituted an integral part of the application. The appellant also takes issue with the General Court’s view that the appellant’s reply was ineffective even though, in accordance with the Rules of Procedure, the appellant had submitted that reply in order to supplement its application, and that it clarified its arguments and provided all of the contested documents. The appellant claims that the General Court erred in law in the order under appeal, which, it submits, is based on serious procedural errors and by which the General Court infringed the appellant’s right to an effective legal remedy.