Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1. Appeals - Grounds - Procedural irregularity - Decision founded on factual evidence on which the appellants had not been heard - Point of law - Admissibility

(ECSC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51, first para.)

2. Appeals - Grounds - Procedural irregularity - Decision founded on facts or documents of which one of the parties is unaware - Infringement of the rights of the defence - Appeal well founded

(ECSC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51, first para.)

3. Actions for annulment - Action by undertakings or associations brought under Article 33, second paragraph, of the ECSC Treaty - Capacity to act - Legal interest in bringing proceedings - Undertakings within the meaning of Article 80 of the Treaty - Undertakings no longer having that status when proceedings commenced

(ECSC Treaty, Art. 33, second para., and Art. 80)

4. Acts of the institutions - Notification - Rejection of a complaint brought by an association of undertakings acting on behalf of its members - Notification of the association deemed to constitute notification of all the members - Association constituting merely a collective name - No effect

(ECSC Treaty, Art. 33, second and third paras)

5. Actions for annulment - Time-limits - Point from which time starts to run - Act neither published nor notified to the appellant - Precise knowledge of the content and grounds

(ECSC Treaty, Art. 33, third para.)

Summary

1. The question whether the Court of First Instance could found its dismissal of the appellants' action on factual evidence on which the appellants had not been heard is a question of law. Examination of the extent to which such evidence actually formed the basis for the dismissal of the action by the decision under appeal is a matter which falls within the power of review vested in the Court of Justice in the context of an appeal. That examination is directed to the procedure followed before the Court of First Instance and is not a re-examination of the facts relating to the substance of the case.

( see para. 20 )

2. It would infringe a fundamental principle of law to base a judicial decision on facts or documents of which the parties, or one of them, have not been able to take cognisance and in relation to which they have not been able to state their views. If it takes such evidence as its basis when dismissing an action as inadmissible, the Court of First Instance commits a breach of procedure which adversely affects the interests of the appellant in the sense contemplated in Article 51 of the ECSC Statute of the Court of Justice.

( see paras 24, 34 )

3. The fact that the appellants - who, it is not disputed, were undertakings within the meaning of Article 80 of the ECSC Treaty at the time of the practices which were the subject of the complaint rejected by the contested decision - subsequently ceased to be undertakings cannot deprive them of their interest in obtaining a finding that the competition rules had been infringed, an infringement whose consequences affected them at a time when they were undertakings and in respect of which they were entitled to lodge a complaint.

( see para. 44 )

4. Where a complaint has been lodged by an ECSC association of undertakings on behalf of its members, notification to the association of the rejection of the complaint must be deemed to constitute notification to all its members.

It would be disproportionate and contrary to the principle of sound administration to require the Commission either to give notice of a decision individually to all the members of an association which has requested it, or to publish every decision addressed to an association.

The fact that an association amounts to no more than a collective name does not alter that finding. When complainants who act together use a collective name, for practical reasons which may also be to their advantage, they must accept that the collective name is equally valid as regards both letters that they send to the Commission and those that the Commission sends to them.

( see paras 45-47 )

5. Where it is not possible to ascertain with any certainty the date on which the appellant first knew exactly what was in the measure that it is contesting and what were the reasons on which it was based and where the measure was neither published nor notified, it must be held that the period prescribed for initiating proceedings began to run, at the latest, from the date on which it can be established that the appellant had such knowledge.

( see para. 49 )