Order — ECLI:EU:C:1999:572
Date: 1999-11-18
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Agriculture and Fisheries;Animal feedingstuffs
Concepts: Application for interim measures: suspension of operation of the contested measure and other interim measures;Appeals;Intervention
Procedure: Action for annulment;Appeal - unfounded;Application for interim measures
Origin: Belgium;Denmark;Finland;Sweden

Summary of the Order 
1. Appeals — Pleas in law — Plea alleging incorrect assessment of the facts — 
Inadmissible 
(Art. 225 EC; EC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51) 
2. Appeals — Pleas in law — Plea alleging incorrect appraisal of the evidence — 
Inadmissible 
(EC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51) 
3. Applications for interim measures — Suspension of operation of a measure — 
Conditions for admissibility — Main action must be prima facie admissible 
(Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, Art. 83(1)) 
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SUMMARY — CASE C-329/99 P(R) 
4. Procedure — Intervention — Conditions for leave to intervene — Prospective 
intervener must have an interest in the outcome of the dispute — Intervention in the 
context of an application for suspension of operation of a Community measure — 
Whether the intervener has a personal right to interim legal protection — No such right 
(EC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 37) 
1. Under Article 225 EC and Article 51 of 
the EC Statute of the Court of Justice, 
an appeal is to be limited to points of 
law and must lie on the grounds of lack 
of competence of the Court of First 
Instance, a breach of procedure before 
it which adversely affects the interests 
of the appellant or the infringement of 
Community law by the Court of First 
Instance. The Court of First Instance 
has exclusive jurisdiction, however, to 
establish the facts, save where a sub­
stantive inaccuracy in its findings is 
apparent from the documents submit­
ted to it, and to appraise those facts. 
2. The Court of Justice does not in 
principle have jurisdiction in appeals 
to examine evidence which the Court 
of First Instance has accepted in sup­
port of its findings of fact or assessment 
of the facts. Where the general princi­
ples of law and rules of procedure 
governing the burden of proof and the 
taking of evidence have been observed, 
it is for the Court of First Instance 
alone to assess the weight to be attri­
buted to the evidence produced. 
3. It follows from the first subparagraph 
of Article 83(1) of the Rules of Proce­
dure of the Court of Justice that only 
the person who has challenged a mea­
sure of an institution in proceedings 
before the Court has standing to apply 
for suspension of operation of that 
measure. Furthermore, in order for that 
application for suspension of operation 
to be held admissible, the applicant 
must establish that there are grounds 
for concluding prima facie that the 
main application to which the applica­
tion for interim measures relates is 
admissible, in order to prevent a situa­
tion where that person is able, by 
means of an application for interim 
measures, to obtain suspension of the 
operation of a measure which the 
Court subsequently refuses to declare 
void because, on examination of the 
substance of the case, the application is 
declared inadmissible. 
4. As regards the conditions which a 
person must satisfy in order to obtain 
leave to intervene in a case, Article 37 
of the Statute of the Court of Justice 
requires only that he establish an 
interest in the result of the case, since 
intervention is of an ancillary nature in 
relation to the subject-matter of the 
case. It follows that, in the context of 
an application for suspension of opera­
tion of a measure, although an inter­
vener may assert his interests, he can­
not widen the subject-matter of the 
dispute by laying claim to a personal 
right to interim legal protection. 
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PFIZER ANIMAL HEALTH V COUNCIL 
The urgency of an application for the 
adoption of interim measures must 
therefore be assessed in the light of 
the extent to which an interlocutory 
order is necessary in order to avoid 
serious and irreparable damage to the 
party seeking the adoption of the 
interim measure. 
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