Opinion of the Advocate General — ECLI:EU:C:2001:243
Date: 2001-05-03
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: External relations
Procedure: Appeal - unfounded;Appeal - inadmissible;Action for damages
Origin: Italy

Summary of the Judgment 
1. Appeals — Grounds — Review by the Court of the assessment of items of informa­
tion — Excluded save where the clear sense of the evidence has been distorted 
2. Community law — Principles — Rights of the defence — Principle of the right to a 
hearing — Observance in the case of the adoption and publication of reports of the 
Court of Auditors 
3. Court of Auditors — Reports — Naming of third parties in a report — Condi­
tions — Review by the Community judicature — Scope 
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SUMMARY — CASE C-315/99 P 
1. The Court of First Instance is the sole 
judge of any need for the information 
available to it concerning the cases 
before it to be supplemented. Whether 
or not the evidence before it is convin­
cing is a matter to be appraised by it 
alone and is not subject to review by 
the Court of Justice on appeal, except 
where the clear sense of that evidence 
has been distorted or the substantive 
inaccuracy of the Court of First Instan­
ce's findings is apparent from the 
documents in the case-file. 
(see para. 19) 
2. The principle of the right to a hearing is 
a general principle of law whose obser­
vance is ensured by the Court of 
Justice. It applies to any procedure 
which may result in a decision by a 
Community institution perceptibly 
affecting a person's interests. 
Although the adoption and publication 
of reports of the Court of Auditors are 
not decisions directly affecting the 
rights of persons mentioned therein, 
they are capable of having conse­
quences for those persons such that 
those concerned must be enabled to 
make observations on those points in 
such reports which refer to them by 
name, before those reports are defini­
tively drawn up. 
(see paras 28-29) 
3. There may be specific circumstances, 
which may be due to the seriousness of 
the facts or the risk of confusion liable 
to harm the interests of third parties, 
where the Court of Auditors is allowed 
to mention by name in its reports 
persons who in principle are not sub­
ject to its supervision, subject to the 
condition that such persons are entitled 
to a right to a hearing. 
It is for the Community judicature in 
an action brought before it to assess in 
such a case whether the naming of 
persons was necessary and proportion­
ate to the objective pursued by pub­
lication of the report. The full power of 
review which it exercises in that con­
nection falls within its untrammelled 
appraisal of the facts against which no 
appeal lies except where there is a 
substantive inaccuracy in the findings 
of fact or the clear sense of the evidence 
in the case-file has been distorted. 
(see paras 40-41) 
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