Opinion of the Advocate General — ECLI:EU:C:1997:422
Date: 1997-09-23
Language of the case: French
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Industrial policy
Procedure: Action for annulment - successful

Summary of the Judgment
Trans-European networks — Establishment of guidelines — Measures needed in order to ensure
the interoperability of networks — Financial support — Council decision on a Community con­
tribution for telematic interchange of data between administrations in the Community — Legal
basis — Article 129d of the Treaty — Annulment on the ground of recourse to Article 235 —
Temporal effects
(EC Treaty, Arts 129b, 129c, 129d, 174 and 235; Council Decision 95/468)
Not only does the objective of Decision
95/468 on a Community contribution for
telematic interchange of data between
administrations in the Community (IDA)
serve a purpose which falls within Article
129b of the Treaty, concerning the establish­
ment and development of trans-European
networks: its very content falls within the
ambit of such development. Moreover, since
the measures for which it provides fall
within the first, second and third indents of
Article 129c(1) of the Treaty, relating respec-
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SUMMARY — CASE C-22/96
tively to the establishment of guidelines in
the field in question, the interoperability of
the networks and the provision of financial
support by the Community, the decision
should have been adopted in accordance
with Article 129d. Since it was wrongly
adopted on the basis of Article 235, the use
of which as the legal basis for a measure is
justified only where no other provision of
the Treaty gives the Community institutions
the necessary power to adopt the measure in
question, Decision 95/468 must be annulled.
However, in order to avoid discontinuity in
the measures commenced, and for important
reasons of legal certainty, comparable to
those which arise where certain regulations
are annulled, there appears to be justification
for the Court to exercise the power expressly
conferred upon it by the second paragraph
of Article 174 of the Treaty where a regu­
lation is annulled and to decide that the
effects of the implementing measures already
taken by the Commission on the basis of the
annulled decision should be maintained.
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