Keywords
Summary

Keywords

Trans-European networks - Establishment of guidelines - Measures needed in order to ensure the interoperability of networks - Financial support - Council decision on a Community contribution for telematic interchange of data between administrations in the Community - Legal basis - Article 129d of the Treaty - Annulment on the ground of recourse to Article 235 - Temporal effects

(EC Treaty, Arts 129b, 129c, 129d, 174 and 235; Council Decision 95/468)

Summary

Not only does the objective of Decision 95/468 on a Community contribution for telematic interchange of data between administrations in the Community (IDA) serve a purpose which falls within Article 129b of the Treaty, concerning the establishment and development of trans-European networks: its very content falls within the ambit of such development. Moreover, since the measures for which it provides fall within the first, second and third indents of Article 129c(1) of the Treaty, relating respectively to the establishment of guidelines in the field in question, the interoperability of the networks and the provision of financial support by the Community, the decision should have been adopted in accordance with Article 129d. Since it was wrongly adopted on the basis of Article 235, the use of which as the legal basis for a measure is justified only where no other provision of the Treaty gives the Community institutions the necessary power to adopt the measure in question, Decision 95/468 must be annulled.

However, in order to avoid discontinuity in the measures commenced, and for important reasons of legal certainty, comparable to those which arise where certain regulations are annulled, there appears to be justification for the Court to exercise the power expressly conferred upon it by the second paragraph of Article 174 of the Treaty where a regulation is annulled and to decide that the effects of the implementing measures already taken by the Commission on the basis of the annulled decision should be maintained.