Opinion of the Advocate General — ECLI:EU:C:2012:831
Date: 2012-12-19
Language of the case: French
Subject matter: External relations;Common foreign and security policy
Procedure: Action for annulment;Appeal - unfounded

Summary — Judgment of the Court (Grand Chamber), 23 April 2013 1. Action for annulment — Time-limits — Point from which time starts to run — Measure involving imposition of restrictive measures on a person or an entity — Measure published and communicated to the addressees — Date of communication of the measure (Art. 263, fourth and sixth paras, TFEU and 275, second para., TFEU; Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Art. 102; Council Regulation No 560/2005, as amended by Regulation No 25/2011, Art. 11(3); Council Decision 2010/656, as amended by Decision 2010/801, Art. 7(3)) 2. Legal proceedings — Time-limit for instituting proceedings — Extension on account of distance — Single period — Infringement of the principle of equal treatment as regards parties established in non‑Member countries remote from the seat of the Court —None (Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Art. 102(2)) 3. Legal proceedings — Time-limit for instituting proceedings — Claim barred by lapse of time — Unforeseeable circumstances or force majeure — Meaning — Situation of armed conflict in the State of residence — Obligation to support by factual evidence the impossibility of complying with the time-limit (Art. 263, sixth para., TFEU; Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 45, second para.) 1. As regards Council measures imposing restrictive measures on persons and entities in Côte d’Ivoire, which were published in the Official Journal of the European Union and must also, pursuant to Article 7(3) of Decision 2010/656 renewing the restrictive measures against Côte d’Ivoire, as amended by Decision 2010/801, and Article 11a(3) of Regulation No 560/2005 imposing certain specific restrictive measures directed against certain persons and entities in view of the situation in Côte d'Ivoire, as amended by Regulation No 25/2011, be communicated to the persons and entities concerned, either directly if their addresses are known, or, if not, through the publication of a notice in the Official Journal, the period for the bringing of an action for annulment under the fourth paragraph of Article 263 TFEU runs, for each of those persons and entities, from the date of the communication which they must receive. Since those measures, which at the same time resemble both measures of general application and also a bundle of individual decisions, were adopted on the basis of provisions relating to the Common Foreign and Security Policy, it is the individual nature of those measures which, in accordance with the second paragraph of Article 275 TFEU and the fourth paragraph of Article 263 TFEU, permits access to the Courts of the European Union. Having regard to those particular features and the consequent rules relating to publication and communication, the sixth paragraph of Article 263 TFEU would not be applied consistently if, when applied to persons and entities concerned, the starting point for the calculation of the period for bringing an action for annulment was, for those persons, fixed as the date of publication of the measure at issue and not as the date when that measure was communicated to them. The purpose of that communication is precisely to ensure that persons to whom the measures are addressed are able to defend their rights in the best possible conditions and to decide, with full knowledge of the relevant facts, whether there is any point in their applying to the Courts of the European Union. Further, given that the notices published in the Official Journal for the attention of the persons and entities concerned are capable of enabling them to identify the legal remedies available to them in order to challenge their designation in the lists and the date when the period for bringing proceedings expires, the persons and entities concerned should not be able to defer the starting point of the period for bringing proceedings by relying on the fact that there was no direct communication or that they actually became aware of the decision at a later date. If such a possibility were, in the absence of force majeure, open to the applicants, it would jeopardise the very objective of a time-limit for bringing proceedings, which is to protect legal certainty by ensuring that European Union measures which produce legal effects may not indefinitely be called into question (see paras 55-59, 62) 2. See the text of the judgment. (see para. 63) 3. In accordance with the sixth paragraph of Article 263 TFEU and Article 45 of the Statute of the Court, it is for an applicant who relies on force majeure to establish, first, that abnormal circumstances, unforeseeable and outside his control, made it impossible for him to comply with the time‑limit for bringing proceedings laid down in the sixth paragraph of Article 263 TFEU and, secondly, that he could not guard against the consequences of those circumstances by taking appropriate steps without making unreasonable sacrifices. In that regard, it is not sufficient for an applicant to claim in a general manner that there is a situation of armed conflict in his State of residence while failing to submit any material which might enable the Courts of the European Union to understand in what way and for what specific period of time the general situation of armed conflict and the personal circumstances prevented him from bringing his action in good time. (see paras 72-74)