Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1. Actions for annulment - Actionable measures - Definition - Measures producing binding legal effects - Letter sent by an institution

(Art. 230 EC)

2. Actions for annulment - Action brought against a decision refusing to withdraw or amend an earlier act - Admissibility to be appraised in the light of whether the act in question may be contested

(Art. 230 EC)

3. Actions for annulment - Natural or legal persons - Measures of direct and individual concern to them - Conditions of Employment and Staff Rules of the European Central Bank - General scope - Refusal to amend the rules governing the sources of the conditions applying to employment relations between the European Central Bank and its staff and the rules governing the right to strike - Action brought by a trade union organisation - Inadmissible

(Art. 230, fourth para., EC; Rules of Procedure of the European Central Bank; Conditions of Employment of the Staff of the European Central Bank)

Summary

1. The fact that a letter has been sent by a Community institution to a person in response to a prior request by that person is not sufficient for that letter to be regarded as a decision within the meaning of Article 230 EC, thereby opening the way for an action for annulment. Only measures having binding legal effects of such a nature as to affect the interests of the applicant by having a significant effect on his legal position constitute acts or decisions against which proceedings for annulment may be brought under Article 230 EC.

( see para. 45 )

2. When an act of an institution amounts to a rejection it must be appraised in the light of the nature of the request to which it constitutes a reply. In particular, the refusal by a Community institution to withdraw or amend an act may constitute an act whose legality may be reviewed under Article 230 EC only if the act which the Community institution refuses to withdraw or amend could itself have been contested under that provision.

( see para. 46 )

3. The Conditions of Employment and the Staff Rules of the European Central Bank constitute acts having general scope, which apply to objectively determined situations and produce legal effects with respect to categories of persons envisaged generally and in the abstract.

A trade union organisation may seek the amendment or withdrawal of those acts only in so far as it is directly and individually concerned by them within the meaning of the fourth paragraph of Article 230 EC.

The attributes claimed by a trade union organisation which maintains that it has a duty under the Conditions of Employment to seek to conclude collective agreements for the benefit of the employees of the European Central Bank, in order to participate in restructuring the conditions of work and employment of their members, and the duty to organise strikes, where necessary, for that purpose do not suffice to show that it is individually concerned within the meaning of the fourth paragraph of Article 230 EC by the rules governing the sources of the conditions applying to employment relations between the European Central Bank and its staff and by the rules governing the right to strike, which are contained in that body's Conditions of Employment and Staff Rules respectively. Those attributes are not in fact peculiar to it, inasmuch as they are common to any association which, at any time, assumes the task of protecting the interests of the European Central Bank's employees. The provisions of the Conditions of Employment and the Staff Rules applicable to the staff in question affect the applicant in the same way as they affect all other trade union organisations currently or potentially active in defence of the interests of those workers.

( see paras 48, 50, 54, 56 )