Keywords
Summary

Keywords

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

(EC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51; 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 - `Directly concerned' - Criteria - Implementation of a loan from the Community to the Soviet Union and its constituent Republics - Commission decision, addressed to the borrower, refusing to approve as complying with the applicable Community provisions an addendum to contracts concluded between the borrower's authorised agent and an undertaking which has been awarded a supply contract - Undertaking `directly concerned'

(EC Treaty, Art. 173, fourth para.)

Summary

1 Where an appeal against a judgment of the Court of First Instance clearly states which aspects of the contested judgment are criticised and the legal arguments which specifically support the appeal, the fact that those arguments were also raised at first instance cannot entail their inadmissibility.

2 For an applicant to be directly concerned by a Community measure - a condition of admissibility of an action for annulment brought by a natural or legal person against a decision addressed to another person - the contested Community measure must directly affect the legal situation of the applicant and leave no discretion to the addressees of that measure who are entrusted with the task of implementing it, such implementation being purely automatic and resulting from Community rules without the application of other intermediate rules. The same applies where the possibility for addressees not to give effect to the Community measure is purely theoretical and their intention to act in conformity with it is not in doubt.

In the case of implementation of a loan from the Community to the Soviet Union and its constituent Republics to enable agricultural and food products and medical supplies to be imported, an undertaking which has been awarded a contract to supply wheat is directly concerned, in the above sense, by a Commission decision, addressed to the financial agent of the borrower Republic, refusing to approve as complying with the applicable Community provisions an addendum made to contracts concluded between the undertaking and the agent authorised for that purpose by the borrower Republic, in so far as that agent's option to perform the supply contracts in accordance with the conditions repudiated by the Commission and thus to forgo Community financing was purely theoretical. The said decision, adopted by the Commission in the exercise of its powers, thus deprived the undertaking of any real possibility of performing the contract awarded to it, or of obtaining payment for supplies made thereunder.