Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1. Agriculture — Common organisation of the markets — Bananas — Import arrangements — Tariff quota — Taking into account of the difficulties inherent in the transition from national arrangements to the common organisation of the market — (Council Regulation No 404/93, Art. 19(2) and 30)

2. Non-contractual liability — Conditions — Sufficiently serious breach of Community law — Discretion of the institution in the adoption of measures — (Art. 228 EC, second para.)

3. Appeals — Pleas in law — Grounds of a judgment vitiated by an infringement of Community law — Operative part well founded for other legal reasons — Dismissal

4. Appeals — Pleas in law — Review by the Court of Justice of the legal characterisation of the facts — Permissible — (Art. 225 EC; EC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51)

5. Actions for annulment — Natural or legal persons — Measures of direct and individual concern to them — Refusal by the Commission to adopt regulatory measures enabling importers of bananas from a non-Member State to deal with difficulties arising from the fall in production consequent on exceptional climatic conditions — Inadmissible — (Art. 230 EC, fourth para.; Council Regulation No 404/93, Arts 16(3), 18 and 19(1))

Summary

1. While Article 30 of Regulation No 404/93 on the common organisation of the market in bananas authorises and, according to circumstances, requires the Commission to lay down rules catering for cases of hardship arising from the fact that importers of third-country bananas or non-traditional ACP bananas meet difficulties threatening their existence when an exceptionally low quota is allocated to them on the basis of the reference years to be taken into consideration under Article 19(2) of that regulation, it is by no means ruled out that Article 30 could also apply to other types of difficulties, since they are inherent in the transition from national arrangements existing before that regulation entered into force to the common organisation of the market.

see paras 46-47

2. Community law confers a right to reparation where three conditions are met: the rule of law infringed must be intended to confer rights on individuals; the breach must be sufficiently serious; and there must be a direct causal link between the breach of the obligation resting on the author of the act and the damage sustained by the injured parties. As to the second condition, the decisive test for finding that a breach of Community law is sufficiently serious is whether the Community institution concerned manifestly and gravely disregarded the limits on its discretion. Where that institution has only considerably reduced, or even no, discretion, the mere infringement of Community law may be sufficient to establish the existence of a sufficiently serious breach. It follows that the decisive test for determining whether there has been such an infringement is not the individual nature of the act in question, but the discretion available to the institution when it was adopted.

see paras 53-55

3. Where the grounds of a judgment of the Court of First Instance disclose an infringement of Community law but the operative part of the judgment is shown to be well founded for other legal reasons, the appeal must be dismissed.

see para. 57

4. While it is true that under Article 225 EC and Article 51 of the Statute of the Court of Justice an appeal lies on a point of law only and that, therefore, the Court of First Instance has, in principle, sole jurisdiction to find and appraise the facts, the Court of Justice nevertheless has jurisdiction to review the legal characterisation of those facts by the Court of First Instance and the legal conclusions it has drawn from them.

see para. 69

5. A measure of general application such as a regulation can be of individual concern to natural and legal persons only if it affects them 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.

The main importers of Somalian bananas cannot be considered to have been concerned individually by the regulation which, according to them, the Commission should have adopted, under Article 16(3) of Regulation No 404/93, on the common organisation of the market in bananas, in order to adjust the tariff quota fixed by Article 18 of that regulation to deal with the effect on banana production in Somalia of the exceptional floods in 1997 and 1998.

Even if that regulation could have derogated, in respect of the fraction of the tariff quota which is adjusted, from the allocation formula fixed by Article 19(1) of Regulation No 404/93, it would have concerned the said importers only by reason of their objective status of importers of Somalian bananas, in the same way as every other operator in a similar situation.

see paras 73, 75-76, 79