Judgment — ECLI:EU:T:2003:344
Date: 2003-12-17
Language of the case: German
Court formation: First Chamber
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Free movement of goods;Common customs tariff;Customs Union
Concepts: Direct applicability;General;Intervention;Causal link;Exemption for various types of product
Procedure: Action for damages - unfounded
Origin: Czechia

Summary of the Judgment 
1. Procedure — Intervention — Plea in law, such as a plea of inadmissibility, not raised 
by the defendant — Inadmissible 
(Statute of the Court of justice, Art. 40, fourth para.; Rules of Procedure of the Court 
of First Instance, Art. 116(3)) 
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SUMMARY — CASE T-146/01 
2. Non-contractual liability — Conditions — Unlawfulness •—• Damage — Causal 
link — Failure to meet one of the conditions — Dismissal of an action for damages 
in its entirety 
(Art. 288, second para., EC) 
3. Acts of the institutions — Regulations — Direct applicability — Implementing 
power entailing the exercise of discretion granted to the Member States — Compatible 
(Art. 249 EC) 
4. Non-contractual liability — Conditions — Regulation or directive authorising a 
Member State to derogate from a Community customs allowance or fiscal exemp­
tion — Damage suffered by an exporter established in an adjacent non-member 
country — Causal link — None 
(Art. 288, second para., EC) 
1. Interveners must, under Article 116(3) 
of the Rules of Procedure of the Court 
of First Instance, accept the case as they 
find it at the time of their intervention 
and their submissions in an application 
to intervene are, under the fourth 
paragraph of Article 40 of the Statute 
of the Court of Justice, limited to 
reinforcing the submissions of the main 
party in support of whom they inter­
vene. An intervener is therefore not 
entitled to plead a ground of inadmis­
sibility not set out in the form of order 
sought by the defendant. 
2. In order for the Community to incur 
non-contractual liability, the applicant 
seeking damages must establish the 
unlawfulness of the alleged conduct of 
the institution concerned, actual dam­
age, and the existence of a direct link of 
cause and effect between that conduct 
and the alleged damage, that is to say 
that the damage is a direct consequence 
of the conduct complained of, a matter 
which the applicant has the burden of 
proving. Since those three conditions 
are cumulative, failure to meet one of 
them is sufficient for an action for 
damages to be dismissed. 
(see paras 47-48) (see paras 71-74) 
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OLD TRADING v COUNCIL 
3. The fact that a Community regulation 
is directly applicable does not in any 
way prevent its provisions from 
empowering Member States to adopt 
the implementing measures — 
whether legislative, regulatory, admin­
istrative or financial — necessary for 
its actual implementation or the 
Member States from having a discre­
tion for that purpose. 
(see para. 82) 
4. In adopting a regulation which auth­
orises a Member State to derogate from 
application of a Community customs 
allowance relating to certain products 
and simply requires it to comply with a 
minimum amount for the allowance 
which is expressed in terms of value, 
the Council does not impose any obli­
gation on the Member State concerned 
to make use of the derogation made 
available to it. It thus remains lawful 
for the national authorities to adopt in 
domestic legislation at any time the 
level of the generally applicable Com­
munity allowance in order to bring 
application of the derogation to an end. 
Such a regulation cannot therefore be 
regarded as being directly at the root of 
damage in the form of loss of income 
linked to the sale of such products to 
travellers importing them into the 
Member State concerned, alleged by a 
business established in a non-member 
country with which that Member State 
shares a border, by reason of the setting 
of allowances by the Member State's 
authorities of an amount which the 
Community legislation did not require 
them to adopt. 
Likewise, a directive limiting the quan­
tities of certain products that are 
capable of qualifying for a fiscal 
exemption and which expressly states 
merely that the Member States may 
reduce those quantities — a power of 
which the national authorities make 
use — cannot be considered to be 
directly at the root of damage of that 
kind. 
(see paras 76-78, 80, 91-92, 94) 
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