Keywords
Summary

Keywords

Actions for annulment - Natural or legal persons - Measures of direct and individual concern to them - Commission decision declaring aid incompatible with the common market - Action brought by bodies representing the employees of the recipient undertaking - Inadmissible

(EC Treaty, Art. 93(2) (now Art. 88(2) EC) and Art. 173, fourth para. (now, after amendment, Art. 230 EC, fourth para.))

Summary

$$Persons other than those to whom a decision is addressed may claim to be individually concerned within the meaning of the fourth paragraph of Article 173 (now, after amendment, fourth paragraph of Article 230 EC) of the Treaty only if the decision at issue affects them by reason of certain attributes peculiar to them or by reason of circumstances in which they are differentiated from all other persons, and by virtue of these factors distinguishes them individually just as in the case of the person addressed.

By itself, their status as negotiators with regard to social aspects of a decision declaring aid incompatible with the common market does not suffice to distinguish bodies representing the employees of the undertaking in receipt of aid individually just as in the case of the person to whom the decision at issue was addressed, where it is apparent from the account of the facts in the decision at issue that that status constitutes only a tenuous link with that decision and that the applicant bodies did not participate in the procedure initiated under Article 93(2) of the Treaty (now Article 88(2) EC).

The fact that in one point of the grounds for the decision at issue the Commission mentioned considerations of a social nature is irrelevant, given that that institution did not base its assessment of the compatibility of the aid with the common market on that observation but that it is clear on the contrary from that decision, taken as a whole, that it is based on other grounds.

( see paras 39, 47-49, 51, 53-54 )