Keywords

Summary



Keywords

1. Procedure - Decision replacing,during the proceedings, the contested decision - New factor - Extension of the initial claims for relief and pleadings

2. Acts of the institutions - Statement of reasons - Obligation - Scope - Commission decision reducing the amount of assistance from the European Regional Development Fund

(EC Treaty, Art. 190 (now Art. 253 EC))

3. Economic and social cohesion - European Regional Development Fund - Grant of Community financial assistance - Reduction of the amount of financial assistance approved in the initial budget - Breach of the principles of protection of legitimate expectations and legal certainty

Summary

1. Where a decision is, during the proceedings, replaced by a decision with the same subject-matter, this must be considered a new factor allowing the applicant to adapt its pleas in law and claims for relief. It would not be in the interests of the due administration of justice and the requirements of procedural economy to oblige the applicant to make a fresh application to the Court. Moreover, it would be inequitable if the Commission were able, in order to counter criticisms of a decision contained in an application to the Court, to amend the contested decision or to substitute another for it and to rely in the proceedings on such an amendment or substitution in order to deprive the other party of the opportunity of extending his original pleadings to the later decision or of submitting supplementary pleadings directed against that decision.

( see para. 33 )

2. The purpose of the obligation to state the reasons on which an individual decision is based is to enable the Community judicature to review the legality of the decision and to provide the person concerned with sufficient information to make it possible to ascertain whether the decision is well founded or whether it is vitiated by a defect which may permit its legality to be contested. The extent of that obligation depends on the nature of the measure in question and on the context in which it was adopted. It follows that the statement of reasons must in principle be notified to the person concerned at the same time as the decision adversely affecting him and that a failure to state the reasons cannot be remedied by the fact that the person concerned learns of the reasons for the decision during the proceedings before the Court.

Where a decision reduces the amount of assistance from the European Regional Development Fund, in view in particular of the fact that such a decision has serious consequences for the person benefiting from the assistance, that decision must clearly show the grounds which justify a reduction of the amount of the assistance initially authorised.

( see paras 46-49 )

3. Grant of financial assistance is subject not only to compliance with the conditions laid down by the Commission in the decision granting assistance but also to compliance with the terms of the application for assistance in respect of which that decision was given.

If, when it applied for financial assistance from the European Regional Development Fund, the applicant has submitted to the Commission a programme of work together with the planned budget, which has been accepted by the Commission, the Commission may not, without infringing the principles of the protection of legitimate expectations and legal certainty, consider an action provided for in the initial budget ineligible and consequently reduce financial assistance as regards that amount.

( see paras 68, 71-72 )