Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1. ECSC - Aid to the steel industry - Authorisation by the Commission - Regional investment aid - Conditions - Notification of planned aid in good time - Failure to comply with the time-limit - Effects

(General Decision No 3855/91, Art. 6(1))

2. Appeals - Pleas in law - Grounds of a judgment vitiated by an infringement of Community law - Operative part well founded on other legal grounds - Dismissal

Summary

1. The period for notification of aid plans laid down in Article 6(1) of the Fifth Steel Aid Code operates as a time-bar such as to preclude the approval of any aid plan notified subsequent to it. It follows that the Commission was not entitled to authorise aid unless the plans to grant or alter it had been notified before the time-limit specifically laid down.

Furthermore, since it is a question which touches on the competence of the Commission, the question of compliance with that time-limit must be raised by the Court of its own motion even though none of the parties has asked it to do so.

( see paras 49, 55-56 )

2. Where the grounds of a judgment of the Court of First Instance disclose an infringement of Community law but the operative part of the judgment is shown to be well founded for other legal reasons, the appeal must be dismissed.

( see para. 58 )