ORDER OF THE COURT (Eighth Chamber)
30 April 2026 (*)
( Appeal – Article 181 of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice – Public access to documents of the EU institutions – Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 – Article 4 – Exceptions to the right of access – Request for access to certain documents relating to an application for registration of a name as a protected geographical indication – Partial refusal to grant access – Action for annulment – Time limit for bringing proceedings )
In Case C‑516/25 P,
APPEAL under Article 56 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union, brought on 29 July 2025,
Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), established in New Delhi (India),
Bernard O’Connor, residing in Brussels (Belgium),
represented by M. Hommé and B. O’Connor, avocats,
appellants,
the other party to the proceedings being:
European Commission,
defendant at first instance,
THE COURT (Eighth Chamber),
composed of O. Spineanu-Matei, President of the Chamber, S. Rodin and N. Piçarra (Rapporteur), Judges,
Advocate General: A. Rantos,
Registrar: A. Calot Escobar,
having decided, after hearing the Advocate General, to give a decision by reasoned order, in accordance with Article 181 of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice,
makes the following
Order
1        By their appeal, Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) (India) and Mr Bernard O’Connor ask the Court of Justice to set aside the order of the General Court of the European Union of 21 May 2025, APEDA and O’Connor v Commission (T‑70/25, ‘the order under appeal’, EU:T:2025:545), by which the General Court dismissed their action, in part on account of the General Court’s manifest lack of jurisdiction to hear and determine it, and in part on the ground that it was manifestly inadmissible, in which they sought annulment of Commission Decision C(2024) 8058 final of 13 November 2024 rejecting the request for access to documents that had been made on the basis of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents (OJ 2001 L 145, p. 43) (‘the decision at issue’).
The appeal
2        Under Article 181 of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, where the appeal is, in whole or in part, manifestly inadmissible or manifestly unfounded, the Court may at any time, acting on a proposal from the Judge-Rapporteur and after hearing the Advocate General, decide by reasoned order to dismiss that appeal in whole or in part.
3        That provision must be applied in the present case.
4        On 26 February 2026, the Advocate General took the following position:
‘2.      In support of their appeal, the appellants raise, in essence, two grounds of appeal, alleging (i) that the General Court erred in its interpretation of the first plea raised at first instance, and (ii) that an error was made in the interpretation of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court as regards the calculation of the time limits for bringing proceedings.
3.      For the purposes of the present analysis, I consider it appropriate to begin by examining the second ground of appeal, relating to the admissibility of the application at first instance. It is only if that application should have been declared admissible that it will then be necessary to examine the first ground of appeal, which concerns the scope of the first head of claim of the action at first instance.
The second ground of appeal
4.      By their second ground of appeal, the appellants complain that the General Court erred in its interpretation of the provisions of its Rules of Procedure governing the calculation of the time limits for bringing proceedings.
5.      In paragraphs 13 and 14 of the order under appeal, the General Court observed, essentially, that, according what the appellants themselves had stated, the decision at issue had been notified to them on 14 November 2024. It inferred from this that the time limit of two months laid down in the sixth paragraph of Article 263 TFEU had, first, begun to run, in accordance with Article 58(1)(a) of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court, the day after that notification, namely on 15 November 2024 at 00:00, and, second, expired, in accordance with Article 58(1)(b) of those rules of procedure, on 14 January 2025 at midnight. After adding the single period of 10 days on account of distance provided for in Article 60 of those rules of procedure, the General Court concluded that the time limit for bringing proceedings had definitively expired on Friday 24 January 2025 at midnight. Since the application had been lodged on 27 January 2025, that is, after the expiry of that time limit, the General Court therefore declared the action inadmissible.
6.      The appellants submit, in essence, that a correct application of Article 58(1)(b) of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court should have led the latter to conclude that, in the present case, the time limit had begun to run on 15 November 2024 and expired on 15 January 2025. Extended by the single period of 10 days provided for in Article 60 of those rules of procedure, that time limit should therefore have expired on 25 January 2025. However, since that date fell on a Saturday, the expiry of that time limit, pursuant to Article 58(2) of the Rules of Procedure, was, they argue, extended until the end of the next working day, namely Monday 27 January 2025.
7.      In that regard, I recall, at the outset, that, under the sixth paragraph of Article 263 TFEU, an action for annulment must be brought within two months of the publication of the measure, or of its notification to the plaintiff, or, in the absence thereof, of the day on which it came to the knowledge of the latter, as the case may be. In accordance with Article 60 of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court, that time limit must also be extended on account of distance by a single period of 10 days.
8.      In addition, as regards the calculation of time limits, in accordance with Article 58(1) of those rules of procedure, the procedural time limits prescribed, inter alia, by the Treaties are calculated as follows: “(a) where a time limit expressed in … months … is to be calculated from the moment at which an event occurs or an action takes place, the day during which that event occurs or that action takes place shall not be counted as falling within the time limit in question; (b) a time limit expressed in … months … shall end with the expiry of whichever day in the last … month … is the same day of the week, or falls on the same date, as the day during which the event or action from which the time limit is to be calculated occurred or took place; …”.
9.      In the present case, it is common ground that the decision at issue was notified to the appellants by email on Thursday 14 November 2024 at 18:48 and that the time limit for bringing proceedings began to run from that notification. Therefore, under Article 58(1)(a) of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court, the time limit for bringing proceedings began to run from the end of the day of that notification, irrespective of the time at which that notification took place, namely on 14 November 2024, at midnight (see, to that effect, order of 31 July 2020, TO v EEAS, T‑272/19, EU:T:2020:361, paragraph 55; see, also, by analogy, order of 3 September 2020, STADA Arzneimittel v EUIPO, C‑174/20 P, EU:C:2020:651, paragraphs 24 and 25 and the case-law cited). Moreover, the appellants do not dispute that starting point of the time limit for bringing proceedings. Such an application of that provision of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court also ensures that the day on which the decision at issue was served must not be counted when calculating the period within which the appellants were required to bring their action (see, to that effect, order of the Vice-President of the Court of 17 May 2022, Shanghai Panati v EUIPO, C‑103/22 P(I), EU:C:2022:399, paragraph 34).
10.      By contrast, the appellants submit that the General Court erred in its interpretation of those rules of procedure as regards the determination of the end of that time limit under Article 58(1)(b) of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court. In their view, the time limit expired on 15 January 2025, not on 14 January 2025 at midnight.
11.      In that regard, I note that, as the Court of Justice has held, where, as in the present case, the time limit for commencing proceedings is expressed in calendar months, that time limit expires at the end of the day which, in the month indicated by that time limit, bears the same number as the day during which that time limit was set running, namely the day of notification. To that is added the additional period on account of distance (see judgment of 15 January 1987, Misset v Council, 152/85, EU:C:1987:10, paragraph 8, and order of 2 October 2014, Page Protective Services v EEAS, C‑501/13 P, EU:C:2014:2259, paragraph 24 and the case-law cited). In the present case, since notification of the decision at issue took place on 14 January 2025 and the time limit was to be counted from that date, the General Court was therefore fully entitled to find that that time limit, extended by a single period of 10 days on account of distance, had expired on Friday 24 January 2025 at midnight.
12.      Moreover, I would point out that Article 49(1)(b) of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, which reproduces verbatim the content of Article 58(1)(b) of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court, has been interpreted in the same way (see orders of 11 June 2020, GMPO v Commission, C‑575/19 P, EU:C:2020:448, paragraph 30 and the case-law cited, and of 3 September 2020, STADA Arzneimittel v EUIPO, C‑174/20 P, EU:C:2020:651, paragraph 25 and the case-law cited).
13.      In the light of all the foregoing considerations, I consider that the second ground of appeal must be rejected as manifestly unfounded. Since the General Court held that the action had been brought after the expiry of the time limit prescribed for that purpose and dismissed the action as manifestly inadmissible, the appeal must, therefore, in its entirety, be dismissed as manifestly unfounded, without there being any need to examine the first ground of appeal.
The first ground of appeal
14.      Should the Court of Justice consider it necessary to examine the substance of the first ground of appeal, the appellants’ claims appear, in any event, to be manifestly unfounded, for the following reasons.
15.      By their first ground of appeal, the appellants submit that, contrary to what the General Court held in paragraph 5 of the order under appeal, the first plea raised at first instance contained only one limb and that nothing in that plea supported the assertion that the appellants had asked the General Court to order the European Commission to produce the documents concerned. The appellants also state that they summarised their first plea incorrectly in paragraph 90 of the application at first instance, while emphasising that that summary cannot be regarded as a second limb of the first plea.
16.      In that regard, first, I note that that ground of appeal is based on a manifestly incorrect reading of paragraph 5 of the order under appeal, since the appellants seem to confuse the concept of “plea” with that of “head of claim”, the latter having been expressly referred to by the General Court in that paragraph. The General Court noted, in that paragraph, that “in the second part of the first head of claim, the applicants ask the Court to grant them access to the documents in question”, wording which the appellants do not dispute having used in paragraph 90 of their application at first instance, under the heading “Conclusions”.
17.      Second, I would point out that, as regards the content of the application, Article 76 of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court distinguishes, in two different points, the pleas in law (Article 76(d) of those rules of procedure) and the form of order sought by the applicant (Article 76(e) of those rules of procedure). It was in accordance with Article 76(e) of the Rules of Procedure that the appellants, in paragraph 90 of the application at first instance, entitled “Conclusions”, requested the General Court, first, to annul the decision at issue and to grant them access to the documents concerned and, second, to order the Commission to pay the costs.
18.      It follows that the General Court was entitled to find, without erring in law or distorting the first head of claim of the action at first instance, that that head of claim sought, inter alia, that access to the documents concerned be granted to the appellants, as stated in paragraph 5 of the order under appeal.
19.      I therefore propose that the first ground of appeal should also be rejected as manifestly unfounded.
Conclusion
20.      In the light of the foregoing considerations, I propose that the Court of Justice dismiss the appeal in its entirety, on the basis of an order adopted pursuant to Article 181 of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice and order the appellants to pay the costs, in accordance with Article 137 and Article 184(1) of those rules of procedure.’
5        For the same reasons as those given by the Advocate General, the appeal must be dismissed, in its entirety, as manifestly unfounded.
Costs
6        Under Article 137 of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, applicable to proceedings on appeal pursuant to Article 184(1) of those rules of procedure, a decision as to costs is to be given in the order which closes the proceedings.
7        In the present case, since the present order was adopted before the appeal was served on the other party to the proceedings and, therefore, before that party could have incurred costs, it is appropriate to decide that APEDA and Mr O’Connor are to bear their own costs.
On those grounds, the Court (Eighth Chamber) hereby orders:
1.      The appeal is dismissed as manifestly unfounded.
2.      Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) and Mr Bernard O’Connor shall bear their own costs.
Luxembourg, 30 April 2026.
A. Calot Escobar
O. Spineanu-Matei
Registrar
President of the Chamber
*      Language of the case: English.