Keywords
Summary

Keywords

Industry - Action necessary to ensure the competitiveness of industry - Council decision concerning the adoption of a multiannual programme to promote linguistic diversity of the Community in the information society - Legal basis - Article 130 of the Treaty - Incidental or secondary effects on cultural life - Irrelevant

(EC Treaty, Arts 128 and 130; Council Decision 96/664)

Summary

The Council was entitled to adopt Decision 96/664 on the adoption of a multiannual programme to promote linguistic diversity of the Community in the information society solely on the basis of Article 130 of the Treaty, a provision which enables the Community to decide on specific measures in support of action taken in the Member States to ensure the competitiveness of Community industry.

The wording of the title of a measure cannot by itself determine its legal basis and, in this case, the words `to promote ... linguistic diversity' appearing in the title of the contested decision cannot be isolated from the measure as a whole and interpreted independently. It does not appear from the aim or content of the decision in question that it is concerned, indissociably, with both industry and culture. Although it is not disputed that the programme will have beneficial effects for the dissemination of cultural works, in particular by improving the tools available for the task of translation, these are indirect and incidental as compared with the direct effects sought, which are of an economic nature, and do not justify basing the decision on Article 128 of the Treaty as well.

Moreover, that interpretation conforms with the actual text of Article 128(4) of the Treaty, according to which the Community is to take cultural aspects into account in its action under other provisions of the Treaty. It is clear from that provision that not every description of the cultural aspects of Community action necessarily implies that recourse must be had to Article 128 as the legal basis, where culture does not constitute an essential and indissociable component of the other component on which the action in question is based but is merely incidental or secondary to it.