Keywords
Summary

Keywords

Applications for interim measures - Suspension of operation of a measure - Interim measures - Conditions for granting - Prima facie case - Serious and irreparable damage - Damage to the environment - System for limiting road traffic transiting through Austria

(Arts 242 EC and 243 EC; Protocol No 9 to the 1994 Act of Accession; Council Regulation No 3298/94)

Summary

$$Although environmental damage such as that linked to the density of traffic on certain road axes is irreversible since it cannot be eliminated retroactively, the judge hearing an application for interim relief may not, in connection with the system for limiting road traffic transiting through Austria established by Protocol No 9 to the 1994 Act of Accession and Regulation No 3298/94, for the purpose of establishing the urgency justifying his intervention, take into account such damage in order to restrict the transit possibilities introduced by a Commission decision, until the time when the negative effects of such transit traffic exceed the level which had been considered acceptable when the Protocol was adopted.

Consequently, where it is not clear, after an initial examination, that that level has in fact been exceeded, the grant of a suspension of operation or interim measures does not appear justified, in view of the fact that the virtually definitive effects of a measure which would result in limiting the transit traffic in question must be weighed against the direct and considerable impact on the activities of undertakings operating in the market under consideration and, more generally, on the proper functioning of the internal market.

( see paras 92-94, 96-97 )