Keywords

Summary



Keywords

1. Non-contractual liability — Conditions — Sufficiently serious breach of Community law — Discretion available to an institution when adopting measures — (EC Treaty, Art. 215, second para. (now Art. 288, second para., EC))

2. Non-contractual liability — Sufficiently serious breach of Community law — Imposition of provisional anti-dumping and countervailing duties on the exports of a company which has entered into undertakings with respect to the minimum price of exports — Imposition despite the existence of a report of the company concerned indicating that the undertakings entered into have been complied with but which has been unilaterally amended by the Commission without prior consultation of that company — Community liability incurred — (EC Treaty, Art. 215, second para. (now Art. 288, second para., EC))

3. Appeals — Grounds of appeal — Incorrect assessment of the facts — Inadmissible — Review by the Court of Justice of assessment of evidence — Excluded unless the clear sense of the evidence has been distorted — (Art. 225 EC; Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, Art. 58)

Summary

1. Community law confers a right to reparation where three conditions are met: the rule of law infringed must be intended to confer rights on individuals; the breach must be sufficiently serious; and there must be a direct causal link between the breach of the obligation resting on the author of the act and the damage sustained by the injured parties. As regards the second condition, the decisive test for finding that a breach of Community law is sufficiently serious is whether the Community institution concerned manifestly and gravely disregarded the limits on its discretion. Where that institution has only considerably reduced, or even no, discretion, the mere infringement of Community law may be sufficient to establish the existence of a sufficiently serious breach. It follows that the determining factor in deciding whether there has been such an infringement is not the individual nature of the act in question but the discretion available to the institution when adopting it.

see paras 25-27

2. Article 8(10) of Regulation No 384/96 on protection against dumped imports from countries not members of the European Community and Article 13(10) of Regulation No 2026/97 on protection against subsidised imports from countries not members of the European Community, while granting the Commission the power to impose provisional anti-dumping and countervailing duties on products exported to the Community by a company established in a non-Member State, require at the same time that there be reason to believe that the undertaking to comply with a minimum price has been breached and that the decision imposing such duties be taken on the basis of the best information available. The Commission thus adopts conduct which must be regarded as a sufficiently serious breach of a rule of Community law satisfying one of the conditions for the incurring of non-contractual liability by the Community where it imposes such duties, relying solely on the analysis of a report drawn up by the exporting company concerned which gave reason to believe that that company had complied with its undertaking not to make sales below a minimum average price, but which the Commission had amended on its own initiative, without asking the company what impact its unilateral action might have on the reliability of the information which that company had provided to it.

see paras 29-31

3. Under Article 225 EC and Article 58 of the Statute of the Court of Justice, an appeal lies on a point of law only. It follows that, save where the clear sense of the evidence has been distorted, the Court has no jurisdiction to review the assessment of the facts made by the Court of First Instance.

see para. 45