Judgment — ECLI:EU:T:1999:106
Date: 1999-05-20
Language of the case: English
Court formation: Fourth Chamber
Based on: Merger Treaty (1965)
Subject matter: Agriculture and Fisheries;Milk products
Concepts: Effects of judgments determining validity
Procedure: Action for annulment - successful
Origin: United Kingdom

Summary of the Judgment 
Preliminary rulings — Assessment of validity — Declaration that a regulation is invalid — 
Effects — Application by analogy of Article 176 of the Treaty (now Article 233 EC) — 
Obligations of the Community institutions — Scope — Compensation for damage caused 
by the illegality found — Covered 
(EC Treaty, Arts 176, 177 and 215, second para. (now Arts 233 EC, 234 EC and 288, 
second para., EC) 
When, in proceedings under Article 177 of 
the EC Treaty (now Article 234 EC), the 
Court of Justice rules that an act adopted 
by the Community legislature is invalid, its 
decision has the legal effect of requiring the 
competent Community institutions to 
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SUMMARY — CASE T-220/97 
adopt the measures necessary to remedy 
that illegality. They must therefore take the 
measures necessary to comply with that 
judgment in the same way as they must, 
under Article 176 of the Treaty (now 
Article 233 EC), in the case of a judgment 
annulling a measure or declaring that the 
failure of a Community institution to act is 
unlawful. When a Community measure is 
held to be invalid by a preliminary ruling, 
the obligation laid down by Article 176 of 
the Treaty applies by analogy. 
The obligation on the institutions to take 
the measures necessary to remedy illegal­
ities found by the Community judicature 
requires them not only to adopt the essen­
tial legislative or administrative measures 
but also to make good damage which has 
resulted from the unlawful act, subject to 
fulfilment of the conditions laid down in 
the second paragraph of Article 215 of the 
Treaty (now the second paragraph of 
Article 288 EC) concerning the presence 
of fault, harm and a causal link. 
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