Order — ECLI:EU:C:2003:617
Date: 2003-11-14
Language of the case: German
Court formation: President of the Chamber
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Transport
Concepts: Application for interim measures: suspension of operation of the contested measure and other interim measures
Procedure: Action for annulment;Application for interim measures - unfounded
Origin: Austria

Summary of the Order 
Applications for interim measures — Suspension of operation — Interim measures — 
Conditions for granting — Prima facie case — Serious and irreparable harm — 
Environmental damage — System for limiting road traffic transiting through Aus­
tria — Freezing of ecopoints issued but not yet used — Balancing all the interests 
involved 
(Arts 242 EC and 243 EC; Protocol No 9 to the 1994 Act of Accession; Commission 
Regulation No 3298/94) 
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SUMMARY — CASE C-393/03 R 
Although environmental damage such as 
that linked to the density of traffic on 
certain road axes is irreversible since it 
cannot be eliminated retroactively, the 
judge hearing an application for interim 
relief may not, in connection with the 
system for limiting road traffic transiting 
through Austria established by Protocol 
No 9 to the 1994 Act of Accession and 
Regulation No 3298/94, for the purpose of 
establishing the urgency justifying his inter­
vention, take into account such damage in 
order to restrict the transit possibilities 
introduced by a Commission decision, until 
the time when the negative effects of such 
transit traffic exceed the level which had 
been considered acceptable when the Proto­
col was adopted. 
Consequently, where it is not clear, after an 
initial examination, that that level has in 
fact been exceeded, the grant of a suspen­
sion of operation or interim measures does 
not appear justified, in view of the fact that 
the virtually definitive effects of a measure 
which would result in limiting the transit 
traffic in question must be weighed against 
the direct and considerable impact on the 
activities of undertakings operating in the 
market under consideration and, more 
generally, on the proper functioning of the 
internal market. 
Moreover, a decision ordering, as an 
interim measure, the freezing, in the ratio 
corresponding to the remainder of 2003, 
the use of the ecopoints already issued but 
not yet used, might lead to the loss of those 
ecopoints and therefore have a definitive 
effect on the activities of those undertak­
ings and, more generally, on the proper 
functioning of the internal market, since it 
is not clear that, if an ecopoints system for 
heavy goods vehicles in transit through 
Austria is established for 2004, it will be 
possible to apply in that year ecopoints 
from the current system. 
(see paras 60, 63-65) 
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