Judgment — ECLI:EU:T:1998:204
Date: 1998-09-15
Language of the case: Italian
Court formation: Second Chamber
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Agriculture and Fisheries;Oils and fats
Concepts: General;Applications by natural or legal persons;Independent nature of the action for damages;Actions directed against national implementing measures
Procedure: Action for damages - unfounded;Action for annulment - inadmissible
Origin: Italy

Summary of the Judgment 
1. Actions for annulment — Actionable measures — Definition — Measures producing binding 
legal effects — Letter from a Commission department to the national authorites responsible 
for implementing Community rules in the context of a common organisation of the market 
(EC Treaty, Art. 173; Council Regulations Nos 136/66 and 729/70, Arts 4 and 5) 
2. Actions for annulment — Natural or legal persons — Measures of direct and individual con­
cern to them — Direct concern — Payment by the EAGGF of expenditure relating to opera­
tions carried out in the context of a common organisation of the market — Letter, expressing 
opinions at the stage prior to clearance of accounts, from a Commission department to the 
national authorities responsible for implementing Community rules 
(EC Treaty, Art. 173, fourth para.) 
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SUMMARY — CASE T-54/96 
3. Actions for damages — Independent of actions for annulment — Inadmissibility of an action 
for annulment of a Community measure — No effect on the admissibility of an action seeking 
compensation for damage caused by the unlawful conduct of the institution which adopted 
the contested measure 
(EC Treaty, Arts 173, 178 and 2D, second para.) 
4. Non-contractual liability — Conditions — Unlawfulness — Damage — Causal link — Dam­
age caused, on implementation of Community rules, by a national authority and attributable 
thereto — Lack of jurisdiction of Community judicature 
(EC Treaty, Arts 178 and 215, second para.) 
1. Only measures which produce binding 
legal effects such as to affect directly an 
applicant's interests by changing his legal 
position significantly are acts or decisions 
challengeable by an action for annulment. 
In order to assess whether a letter signed 
by a Director-General of the Commission 
and formally addressed to a Member 
State and its national authorities, but not 
to the applicant, is such a measure, the 
wording of the letter must be interpreted 
in the light of the factual and legal con­
text in which it was drafted and notified 
to the national authorities. 
In that connection, a letter which only 
contains proposals put forward to those 
authorities in order to settle a dispute 
arising out of a Community investigation 
and the request that they block in the 
meantime any payment or deposit in 
respect of stocks of olive oil subject to 
intervention under the common organisa­
tion of the market in oils and fats cannot 
be of a decisional nature. Since both the 
implementation of Community provi­
sions relating to the common market 
organisations and the mobilisation of the 
means necessary to finance the common 
agricultural policy are the responsibility 
of the national bodies appointed for those 
purposes, the Commission's services have 
no authority to take decisions to imple­
ment those provisions or grant such 
financing. They may only express their 
opinion, which is not binding on the 
national authorities, and decide, when the 
annual accounts are cleared, on the pay­
ment by the EAGGF of the expenditure 
incurred by the State intervention agen­
cies. 
2. A Community measure can only directly 
affect the legal position of an individual, 
and thus entitle him to bring an action 
against it under the fourth paragraph of 
Article 173 of the Treaty, if that measure 
leaves no discretion to its addressees 
entrusted with the task of implementing 
it, such implementation being purely 
automatic and resulting from Community 
rules alone. The same applies where the 
possibility for addressees not to give 
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OLEIFICI ITALIANI AND FRATELLI RUBINO ν COMMISSION 
effect to the Community measure is 
purely theoretical and their intention to 
act in conformity with it is not in doubt. 
As regards the payment by the EAGGF 
of expenditure relating to intervention 
operations in the context of a common 
organisation of the market, mere opinions 
issued by the Commission's departments 
to national authorities during the infor­
mal stage prior to the clearance of 
accounts which are merely preparatory to 
the Commission's final decision are not 
of direct concern, within the meaning of 
the fourth paragraph of Article 173, to a 
trader. 
3. The action for damages provided for by 
Article 178 and the second paragraph of 
Article 215 of the Treaty was meant to be 
an autonomous form of action with a par­
ticular purpose to fulfil within the system 
of remedies provided for, so that the 
inadmissibility of a claim for annulment 
cannot, on its own, entail the inadmissi­
bility of a claim for reparation of damage 
allegedly suffered through the unlawful 
conduct of the institution, which includes 
the adoption of the contested measure. 
4. If the Community is to incur non­
contractual liability, it is necessary to 
prove that a number of conditions 
regarding the illegality of the conduct of 
which the Community institutions are 
accused are met, that the alleged damage 
is real and that there is a causal link 
between that conduct and the alleged 
damage. 
In that connection, the Community judi­
cature has no jurisdiction to award com­
pensation for damage caused by a deci­
sion of a national authority responsible 
for ensuring the implementation of Com­
munity rules on the common agricultural 
policy, since that decision cannot be 
attributed to the conduct of the Commis­
sion's services in their informal coopera­
tion with the national authorities but is 
due to a deliberate and independent 
choice by those authorities. 
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