Keywords
Summary

Keywords

Actions for annulment - Natural or legal persons - Measures of direct and individual concern to them - Council regulation introducing safeguard measures in respect of imports of rice originating in the overseas countries and territories - Action brought by an undertaking exporting rice from the overseas countries and territories to the Community - Inadmissible

(EC Treaty, Art. 173, fourth para. (now, after amendment, Art. 230, fourth para., EC); Council Regulation No 304/97)

Summary

$$For natural and legal persons to be regarded as individually concerned by a measure of general application adopted by a Community institution, it must affect their legal position by reason of certain attributes peculiar to them, or by reason of a factual situation which differentiates them from all other persons and distinguishes them individually in the same way as the addressee.

Regulation No 304/97 introducing safeguard measures in respect of imports of rice originating in the OCTs is not of individual concern to an exporter of rice from the overseas countries and territories (OCTs) to the Community.

First, that regulation concerns the applicant only by reason of its objective status as an economic operator active in the sector marketing rice originating in the OCTs, in the same way as any other Community economic agent in the same situation. Its status as an exporter, or even export-dealer of rice, from the OCTs to the Community is not therefore sufficient in itself to establish that the applicant is individually concerned by Regulation No 304/97.

Second, the finding that the Council was required, in so far as the circumstances of the case so permitted, to take account of the negative effects which its decision might have on the economy of the OCTs concerned and on the undertakings concerned does not discharge the applicant from the burden of proving that it is affected by the regulation by reason of a factual situation which differentiates it from all other persons.

( see paras 49, 51, 62, 67 )