Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1. Actions for annulment – Natural or legal persons – Measures of direct and individual concern to them

(Art. 230, fourth para., EC; Council Directive 92/43; Commission Decision 2004/798)

2. European Communities – Judicial review of the legality of the acts of the institutions

(Arts 230, fourth para., EC, 234 EC and 241 EC)

3. Actions for annulment – Natural or legal persons – Measures of direct and individual concern to them

(Art. 230, fourth para., EC; Council Directive 92/43; Commission Decision 2004/798)

Summary

1. For the applicant to be directly concerned by a Community measure – the condition for admissibility of an action for annulment within the meaning of the fourth paragraph of Article 230 EC – the latter must directly affect the legal situation of the applicant and leave no discretion to the addressees of that measure who are entrusted with the task of implementing it, such implementation being purely automatic and resulting from Community rules without the application of other intermediate rules.

2. Landowners are not directly concerned by Decision 2004/798 adopting, in application of Directive 92/43 on the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora, the list of sites of Community importance for the Continental biogeographical region. The system of protection provided for in Article 6(2) to (4) of Directive 92/43, which the contested decision applies to their lots of land, does not directly affect their legal situation.

In that regard, whilst it is true that Article 4(5) of Directive 92/43 provides that once a site is included in the list of sites of Community importance referred to in paragraph 3 of Article 4(2), it becomes subject to the provisions of Article 6(2) to (4) of that directive, the latter provisions leave some measure of discretion to the national authorities. It follows that the inclusion of a site in the list of sites of Community importance gives no precise indication concerning the measures which are to be taken by the national authorities in accordance with the provisions of the directive.

Lastly, even if serious economic consequences and legal problems, namely an increase in administration costs and the depreciation in the value of the applicants’ real property, may result directly from the decision, those consequences do not in any event influence the applicants’ legal situation, but only the factual situation of those landowners and do not therefore permit the applicants to be considered to be directly concerned.

(see paras 35, 38, 46‑47)

3. The Treaty, by Articles 230 EC and 241 EC, on the one hand, and by Article 234 EC, on the other, has established a complete system of legal remedies and procedures designed to ensure judicial review of the legality of acts of the institutions, and has entrusted such review to the Community Courts. Under that system, where natural or legal persons cannot, by reason of the conditions for admissibility laid down in the fourth paragraph of Article 230 EC, directly challenge Community measures of general application, they are able, depending on the case, either indirectly to plead the invalidity of such acts before the Community Courts under Article 241 EC or to do so before the national courts and ask them, since they have no jurisdiction themselves to declare those measures invalid, to make a reference to the Court of Justice by way of preliminary rulings on validity.

(see para. 49)

4. Decision 2004/798 adopting, pursuant to Directive 92/43 on the conservation of natural habitats, the list of sites of Community importance for the Continental biogeographical region, which designates as sites of Community importance areas in Austria, does not concern individually the local authorities in which the sites are located.

Even if the local authority applicants were competent for the implementation of the directive, that competence could not distinguish them individually within the meaning of the fourth paragraph of Article 230 EC, inasmuch as, first, their legal situation is indistinguishable from that of all other national authorities responsible for implementing the directive and, in particular, Article 6(2) to (4) thereof, and, second, in the light of the general and abstract character of the definition of sites designated the possible influence of obligations arising from the directive on the exercise of the competence of those local authorities for the management and protection of the territory is performed in the same way in respect of all the local authorities whose territory includes a site designated by the contested decision.

The general interest that a regional or local administrative entity, as an authority responsible for economic and social affairs within its jurisdiction, may have in obtaining a result that is favourable for its economic prosperity is not sufficient on its own to enable it to be regarded as being concerned, for the purposes of the fourth paragraph of Article 230 EC, by measures of general application.

(see paras 61‑64, 72)