Order — ECLI:EU:C:2001:270
Date: 2001-05-10
Language of the case: French
Court formation: Fifth Chamber
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Agriculture and Fisheries;Consumer protection
Concepts: Appeals;Applications by natural or legal persons
Procedure: Action for annulment;Appeal - unfounded;Application to intervene - decision unnecessary
Origin: France

Summary of the Order 
1. Appeals — Pleas in law — Admissibility — Conditions — Submission of arguments 
also raised before the Court of First Instance — No effect 
(Art. 225 EC; EC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51, first para.; Rules of 
Procedure of the Court of Justice, Art. 112(1)(c» 
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SUMMARY — CASE C-345/00 P 
2. Actions for annulment — Natural or legal persons — Measures of direct and 
individual concern to them — Question whether there is an absolute bar to 
proceeding — Seriousness of the infringement by the institution concerned — No 
effect — Breach of the principle of institutional balance — No effect 
(Art. 230, fourth para., EC) 
1. Under Article 225 EC and the first 
paragraph of Article 51 of the EC 
Statute of the Court of Justice, an 
appeal must clearly indicate the con­
tested points of the order of which 
annulment is sought and the legal 
arguments on which that claim is 
specifically based. That requirement is 
not satisfied by an appeal which, with­
out even setting out arguments specifi­
cally intended to identify the alleged 
error in law by which the contested 
order is vitiated, confines itself to 
reproducing the pleas and arguments 
already put to the Court of First 
Instance. 
An appeal can, however, be based on 
arguments which have already been 
presented at first instance in order to 
show that, by dismissing the pleas in 
law and arguments presented to it by 
the appellant, the Court of First 
Instance infringed Community law, so 
that the points of law examined at first 
instance may be considered again in an 
appeal provided that the appellant 
contests the way in which the Court 
of First Instance interpreted or applied 
Community law. 
(see paras 30-31) 
2. Whether an application brought by a 
natural or legal person against a deci­
sion of a Community institution not 
addressed to that person is inadmissible 
because the decision is not of direct and 
individual concern to that person, as 
provided in the fourth paragraph of 
Article 230 EC, is a point of admissi­
bility involving public policy consid­
erations which the Community judica­
ture may examine at any time, even of 
its own motion. The seriousness of the 
alleged infringement by the institution 
concerned or the extent of its adverse 
impact on the observance of funda­
mental rights could not, in any event, 
give rise to non-application of the rules 
for admissibility expressly laid down 
by the Treaty. 
Moreover, although the balance of 
powers that characterises the institu-
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FNAB AND OTHERS V COUNCIL 
tional structure of the Community 
constitutes a fundamental guarantee 
granted by the Treaty in particular to 
the undertakings and associations of 
undertakings to which it applies, that 
statement cannot be interpreted as 
providing a remedy for any natural or 
legal person who considers that an act 
of a Community institution has been 
adopted in breach of the principle of 
institutional balance, regardless of 
whether the act in question is of direct 
and individual concern to that person. 
(see paras 39-41) 
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