Keywords
Summary

Keywords

Procedure - Intervention - Persons concerned - Dispute concerning the annulment of a regulation laying down certain technical measures for the conservation of fishery resources - Traders - Local or regional bodies - Whether admissible - Conditions

(EC Statute of the Court of Justice, Arts 37, second para., and 46, first para.)

Summary

$$The concept of an interest in the result of the dispute, within the meaning of the second paragraph of Article 37 of the Statute of the Court of Justice, must be understood as a direct and actual interest in the manner in which applications for forms of order are dealt with. The Community judicature ascertains, in particular, that the intervener is directly affected by the contested act and that it has an established interest in the result of the dispute.

Where an action is brought for annulment of a regulation imposing a ban on the use by vessels flying the flag of a Member State of drift nets for catching certain species, an interest in the result of the dispute is possessed by traders established in a Member State who use that method of fishing, in so far as the regulation could prevent them from carrying on part of their fishing activities and affect their income.

Such an interest is also possessed by a local or regional body if it is able definitely to establish that its economic and social structure is essentially dependent on the sector affected by the contested regulation and that the maintenance in force of that measure could require a reconversion plan for the whole of the area concerned.

However, an application for leave to intervene is inadmissible in the case of a local or regional body whose interest is based on the risk of a reduction in the level of employment and in the activities of traders established in a particular area of its territory - represented by another intervener - where it has not been shown that the economic and social structure of the territory as a whole is essentially dependent on that sector of activity. The general interest which such a body may evince in obtaining a favourable result as far as the prosperity of such undertakings is concerned - and, consequently, as regards the level of employment in the geographical area where those undertakings operate - cannot itself justify an intervention in the dispute, since such an interest is indirect and remote. Moreover, the presumed interest of another intervening party does not constitute a direct interest in the resolution of the dispute.