Judgment — ECLI:EU:C:2001:622
Date: 2001-11-22
Language of the case: Dutch
Court formation: Full Court
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Agriculture and Fisheries;Association Agreement;External relations;Overseas countries and territories;Rice
Concepts: Applications by natural or legal persons
Procedure: Action for annulment - inadmissible

Summary of the Judgment 
Actions for annulment — Natural or legal persons — Measures of direct and individual 
concern to them — Council regulation introducing safeguard measures in respect of 
imports of rice originating in the overseas countries and territories — Action brought by 
an undertaking exporting rice from the overseas countries and territories to the 
Community — Inadmissible 
(EC Treaty, Art. 173, fourth para, (now, after amendment, Art. 230, fourth para., EC); 
Council Regulation No 304/97) 
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SUMMARY — CASE C-451/98 
For natural and legal persons to be regar­
ded as individually concerned by a measure 
of general application adopted by a Com­
munity institution, it must affect their legal 
position by reason of certain attributes 
peculiar to them, or by reason of a factual 
situation which differentiates them from all 
other persons and distinguishes them indi­
vidually in the same way as the addressee. 
Regulation No 304/97 introducing safe­
guard measures in respect of imports of 
rice originating in the OCTs is not of 
individual concern to an exporter of rice 
from the overseas countries and territories 
(OCTs) to the Community. 
First, that regulation concerns the applicant 
only by reason of its objective status as an 
economic operator active in the sector 
marketing rice originating in the OCTs, in 
the same way as any other Community 
economic agent in the same situation. Its 
status as an exporter, or even export-dealer 
of rice, from the OCTs to the Community is 
not therefore sufficient in itself to establish 
that the applicant is individually concerned 
by Regulation No 304/97. 
Second, the finding that the Council was 
required, in so far as the circumstances of 
the case so permitted, to take account of 
the negative effects which its decision might 
have on the economy of the OCTs con­
cerned and on the undertakings concerned 
does not discharge the applicant from the 
burden of proving that it is affected by the 
regulation by reason of a factual situation 
which differentiates it from all other per­
sons. 
(see paras 49, 51, 62, 67) 
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