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Action brought on 27 September 2004 by Eridania Sadam S.p.A. and Others against the Commission of the European Communities

(Case T-386/04)

(2004/C 284/55)

Language of the case: Italian

An action against the Commission of the European Communities was brought before the Court of First Instance of the European Communities on 24 September 2004 by Eridania Sadam S.p.A. and Others, represented by the lawyers Gualtiero Pittalis, Ivano Vigliotti, Gian Michele Roberti, Palo Ziotti and Alessandra Franchi.

The applicants claim that the Court should:

Pleas in law and main arguments

In this action the companies Eridania Sadam S.p.A., Italia Zuccheri S.p.A., Zuccherificio del Molise S.p.A., Cooperativa Produttori Bieticoli a.r.l. (CO.PRO.B.) and Società Fondiaria Romagnola S.p.A. (SFIR) challenge, pursuant to the fourth paragraph of Article 230 EC, Commission Regulation (EC) No 1216/2004 of 30 June 2004 fixing the derived intervention price for white sugar for the marketing year 2004/2005 for all areas in Italy (OJEC L 232 of 1 July 2004, p. 25).

In support of their action the applicants raise the following pleas in law.

First, the applicants maintain that the contested regulation is in various ways incompatible with the basic rules laid down by the Council in Regulation (EC) No 1260/2001 of 19 June 2001. Most particularly, they complain that the regulation at issue wrongly classes Italy as a ‘deficit area’ in respect of sugar supplies, applying to it as a result the derived prices rules (known as ‘regionalisation’).

That classification, based as the applicants believe it to be, on an incorrect economic analysis of the situation, gives rise to damage to the applicants, inasmuch as the introduction of the derived prices brings in a rise in the costs of production for the sugar businesses operating within Italy. In particular, according to the applicants, when computing the domestic supply in Italy, the Commission failed to take account of the quantities of white sugar imported subject to zero duty from the Balkan States, imports that appreciably alter the conditions on which the common organisation of the market operates, causing major imbalances in that market, which are increased as a result of the applying of regionalisation to the Italian market.

The applicants therefore consider that Article 1(d) of the contested regulation is at the same time defective in its grounds and potentially contrary, in its effects, to the Community principles underlying the Common Agricultural Policy and to the rules governing the common organisation of the market in sugar, and also to the principles of proportionality and equal treatment.

If it should happen, which the applicants strongly contest, that the Court of First Instance should be unwilling to uphold the criticisms directed against the regulation at issue in the principal head of claim, the applicants request, as a secondary claim, that the Court should as an interlocutory matter declare unlawful and inapplicable Article 2 of Regulation No 1260/2001, in that it permits the Commission not to take account of the effect on trends in the market of imports not subject to duty or to a quota for the purposes of the fixing of the derived intervention price.

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