Keywords

Summary



Keywords

1. Actions for annulment – Natural or legal persons – Measures of direct and individual concern to them – Absolute bar to proceeding

(Art. 230, fourth para., EC)

2. Actions for annulment – Natural or legal persons – Measures of direct and individual concern to them

(Art. 230, fourth para., EC)

3. European Communities – Judicial review of the legality of the acts of the institutions – Need for natural or legal persons to proceed by way of a preliminary ruling on validity

(Arts 10 EC, 230, fourth para., EC and 234 EC)

Summary

1. The rule laid down in the fourth paragraph of Article 230 EC that proceedings for annulment brought by a natural or legal person against a decision addressed to another person are admissible only if the decision is of direct and individual concern to the former raises an absolute bar to proceeding which the Community judicature may consider at any time, even of its own motion.

(see para. 22)

2. Under the fourth paragraph of Article 230 EC, a natural or legal person may institute proceedings against a decision addressed to another person only if the decision is of ‘direct and individual’ concern to them. Persons other than those to whom a decision is addressed may claim to be individually concerned only if that decision affects them by reason of certain attributes which are peculiar to them or by reason of circumstances in which they are differentiated from all other persons and by virtue of those factors distinguishes them individually just as in the case of the person addressed by such a decision.

Thus, a Commission decision, adopting, pursuant to Directive 92/43 on the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora, a list of sites of Community importance, which concerns a number of areas of land which are classified as sites of Community importance in order to enable the establishment of a coherent European ecological network of special areas of conservation, is, vis-à-vis any person concerned, of general application inasmuch as it applies to all economic operators who, in whatever capacity, carry on or are likely to carry on activities in the areas concerned which could jeopardise the conservation objectives of that directive.

However, the fact that a provision is, by its nature and scope, a provision of general application inasmuch as it applies to the economic operators concerned in general, does not of itself prevent that provision from being of individual concern to some. Where the decision affects a group of persons who were identified or identifiable when that measure was adopted by reason of criteria specific to the members of the group, those persons may be individually concerned by that measure inasmuch as they form part of a limited class of economic operators.

However, the fact that it is possible to determine more or less precisely the number, or even the identity, of the persons to whom a measure applies by no means implies that that measure must be regarded as being of individual concern to those persons where it is established that that application takes effect by virtue of an objective legal or factual situation defined by the measure in question.

A Commission decision adopting a list of sites of Community importance is of concern to the owners of the lands covered by some of the sites only in so far as they have rights in those lands, that is to say, by virtue of an objective legal or factual situation defined by the measure in question and not in accordance with criteria specific to the category of landowners.

(see paras 19, 26, 28-32)

3. Individuals are entitled to effective judicial protection of the rights they derive from the Community legal order. The judicial protection of natural or legal persons who are unable, by reason of the conditions for admissibility laid down in the fourth paragraph of Article 230 EC, to challenge directly Community measures must be guaranteed effectively by a right of action before the national courts. Those courts are under a duty, in accordance with the principle of cooperation in good faith laid down by Article 10 EC, so far as possible, to interpret and apply national procedural rules governing the exercise of rights of action in a way that enables those persons to challenge before the courts the legality of any decision or other national measure relative to the application to them of a Community act such as that at issue, by pleading the illegality of such an act and by asking those courts to make a reference to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling on legality.

(see para. 43)