Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1. Fisheries — Common structural policy — Community financial assistance — Beneficiaries of financial assistance required to provide information and to act in good faith

2. Own resources of the European Communities — Legislation relating to protection of the Community ' s financial interests — Irregularity — Definition — (Council Regulation No 2988/95, Arts 1, 3(1) and 5)

3. Community law — Principles — Protection of legitimate expectations — Legal certainty — Protection refused to person committing a manifest infringement of the rules in force — Community financial assistance — Passage of periods of inaction by the Commission — Primacy of the principle of legality over that of legal certainty justified by the need to maintain equal treatment for recipients of aid — (Council Regulation No 4028/86)

Summary

1. Applicants for and beneficiaries of Community financial aid are subject to an obligation of information and good faith, which requires them to satisfy themselves that they are submitting to the Commission reliable information which is not liable to mislead it, without which the system of controls and evidence set up to determine whether the conditions for granting aid are fulfilled cannot function properly. That obligation is inherent in the system of aid established for fisheries and is essential to its proper functioning.

see paras 52, 108

2. The notion of irregularity referred to in Article 3 of Regulation No 2988/95 on the protection of the European Communities financial interests, with reference to the wider sense given to it under Article 1 of that regulation, should be considered to cover both intentional irregularities or those caused by negligence, which could, in accordance with Article 5 of the regulation, result in an administrative penalty, and irregularities which merely justify the adoption of an administrative measure referred to in Article 4 of the regulation. Moreover, conduct that is identical in substance constitutes a continuous irregularity within the meaning of the second subparagraph of Article 3(1) of that regulation.

see paras 79, 81

3. The principle of the protection of legitimate expectations may not be relied upon by an undertaking which has committed a manifest infringement of the rules in force. Where serious irregularities have been established as regards the applicable legislation and the obligations to provide information and to act in good faith of a joint enterprise created to exploit and where appropriate use, with primary consideration being given to the supply of the Community market, the fishery resources of waters falling within the sovereignty and/or jurisdiction of a specific third party, that enterprise cannot, as a beneficiary of Community financial aid, maintain that the passage of allegedly significant periods of time between two actions by the Commission adversely affected its legitimate expectations that the aid which it had been granted was definitively acquired.

Nor can that enterprise continue to allege a breach of the principle of legal certainty on the basis that the Commission did not act for significant periods of time. While it is important to ensure compliance with requirements of legal certainty which protect private interests, those requirements must be balanced against requirements of the protection of public interests, and precedence must be accorded to the latter when the maintenance of irregularities would be likely to infringe the principle of equal treatment. Consequently, even if the passage of time during which the Commission takes no steps in relation to an undertaking may be capable of infringing the principle of legal certainty, the importance of the time criterion must be qualified in the light of the case.

Furthermore, to maintain the entirety of the aid despite such irregularities would serve to encourage fraud and would undermine the equality of treatment for fisheries aid beneficiaries since it would indicate that that enterprise was receiving the treatment reserved for aid beneficiaries which scrupulously comply with their obligations although it had not done so.

see paras 107, 110-113