Keywords
Summary

Keywords

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1. Applications for interim measures ° Request for a declaration as to interpretation ° Inadmissible

(EC Treaty, Arts 168a(1), 185 and 186; Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, Art. 104)

2. Applications for interim measures ° Suspension of operation of a measure ° Suspension of operation of a regulation prohibiting certain imports ° Conditions for granting ° Exceptional circumstances relating to both urgency and prima facie case

(EC Treaty, Art. 185; Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, Art. 104(2); Council Regulation No 3254/91)

Summary

1. In an application for interim measures, a request for a declaration as to interpretation must be dismissed as inadmissible because it is incompatible with both the specific nature of interim proceedings and, more generally, the system of remedies of which it forms a part.

The EC Treaty distinguishes between direct actions before the Community judicature and the procedure for seeking a preliminary ruling under Article 177. Only in the latter case may the Court of Justice be asked to give a decision whose operative part itself relates directly to the interpretation of a rule of Community law. Such a decision cannot, therefore, be obtained in interim proceedings, which are necessarily an adjunct to a direct action. Furthermore, there is no legitimate interest for such a request where it relates to a regulation whose implementation is a matter not for the Community institutions but for the authorities of the Member States, since the effects of any order granting it would, prima facie, be confined to the parties to the interim proceedings, namely the applicant and the defendant Community institution, whereas an interpretation by the Court of Justice could be obtained in the context of proceedings before a national court and could apply by virtue of a decision of that court to the relations between the applicant and those national authorities.

2. If an undertaking in the fur sector were accorded suspension of the operation of Regulation No 3254/91 prohibiting the use of leghold traps in the Community and the introduction into the Community of pelts and manufactured goods of certain wild animal species originating in countries which catch them by means of leghold traps or trapping methods which do not meet international humane trapping standards, it would irremediably deprive the ban on imports in that regulation of its effect for as long as the interim order remained valid and to the extent that goods of the kind referred to in Regulation No 3254/91 were brought into free circulation in the Community by the applicant or any other importer. It cannot therefore be granted unless there are exceptional circumstances which demonstrate that, despite the effects which it would produce, it would be disproportionate to dismiss the applicant' s request.

There are no such circumstances where the undertaking has been unable to show either that the application of the regulation in question entails a serious and pressing threat of its being forced into liquidation or that the regulation and the attitude of the Community institutions are manifestly unlawful.