Keywords
Summary

Keywords

Actions for annulment - Natural or legal persons - Measures of direct and individual concern to them - Decision addressed to a Member State granting financial assistance under the ERDF for the building of power stations - Persons not individually concerned - Associations representing those persons - Inadmissibility - Rights under Directive 85/337 - No effect - Protection by national courts

(EC Treaty, Arts 173, fourth para., and 177; Council Directive 85/337)

Summary

Persons other than the addressees may claim that a decision is of individual concern to them only if that decision affects them by reason of certain attributes which are peculiar to them, or by reason of factual circumstances which differentiate them from all other persons and thereby distinguish them individually in the same way as the person addressed.

As regards more particularly a decision addressed to a Member State concerning the grant, under the European Regional Development Fund, of financial assistance for the building of two power stations, natural persons whose specific situation was not taken into consideration in the adoption of the decision, which concerns them in a general and abstract fashion and, in fact, like any other person in the same situation, are not individually concerned by the decision. The same applies to associations representing those persons which claim to have locus standi on the basis that their members are individually concerned by the decision.

In that connection environmental rights arising under Directive 85/337 on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment cannot be invoked, since it is the decision to build the power stations which is liable to affect those environmental rights and not the decision concerning the Community financing, which can only have an indirect effect.

Inasmuch as proceedings may be brought before the national courts challenging the administrative authorisations concerning the construction of the power stations and the declarations of environmental impact relating to the construction products, the rights afforded to individuals by Directive 85/337 are fully protected by the national courts which may, if need be, refer a question to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling under Article 177 of the Treaty. Locus standi must accordingly be assessed in the light of the criteria set out in the first paragraph above.