Keywords

Summary



Keywords

1. Appeals — Pleas in law — Mere repetition of the pleas and arguments raised before the Court of First Instance — Inadmissible — Challenge to the interpretation or application of Community law by the Court of First Instance — Admissible — (Art. 225 EC; Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 58, first para.; Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, Art. 112(1)(c))

2. Actions for annulment — Judgment annulling a measure — Effects — Obligation to adopt measures to comply with the judgment — Scope — Decision need not reiterate the grounds given for the contested measure — (EC Treaty, Art. 176 (now Art. 233 EC); Commission Decision 94/90)

3. Commission — Power to determine its own internal organisation — Public's right of access to Commission documents — Decision 94/90 — Application of the authorship rule — (Commission Decision 94/90)

4. Commission — Public's right of access to Commission documents — Decision 94/90 — Exceptions to the principle of access to documents — Strict interpretation and application — Authorship rule — Scope — (Commission Decision 94/90)

Summary

1. It follows from Article 225 EC, the first paragraph of Article 58 of the Statute of the Court of Justice and Article 112(1)(c) of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice that an appeal must indicate precisely the contested elements of the judgment which the appellant seeks to have set aside and also the legal arguments specifically advanced in support of the appeal.

Where an appeal merely repeats or reproduces verbatim the pleas in law and arguments previously submitted to the Court of First Instance, including those based on facts expressly rejected by that Court, it fails to satisfy the requirements to state reasons under those provisions.

However, provided that the appellant challenges the interpretation or application of Community law by the Court of First Instance, the points of law examined at first instance may be discussed again in the course of an appeal. Indeed, if an appellant could not thus base his appeal on pleas in law and arguments already relied on before the Court of First Instance, an appeal would be deprived of part of its purpose.

Thus, an appeal which, taken as a whole, specifically seeks to challenge the position adopted by the Court of First Instance on various points of law raised before it at first instance is admissible provided that it indicates clearly the aspects of the judgment under appeal which are criticised and the pleas in law and arguments on which it is based.

see paras 15-18

2. When the Court of First Instance annuls an act of an institution, that institution is required, under Article 176 of the Treaty (now Article 233 EC), to take the measures necessary to comply with the Court's judgment. In that regard, in order to comply with a judgment annulling a measure and to implement it fully, the institution concerned is required to have regard not only to the operative part of the judgment but also to the grounds which led to the judgment and constitute its essential basis, in so far as they are necessary to determine the exact meaning of what is stated in the operative part. It is those grounds which, on the one hand, identify the precise provision held to be illegal and, on the other, indicate the specific reasons which underlie the finding of illegality contained in the operative part and which the institution concerned must take into account when replacing the annulled measure.

However, Article 176 of the Treaty requires the institution which adopted the annulled measure only to take the necessary measures to comply with the judgment annulling its measure. Accordingly, that article requires the institution concerned to ensure that any act intended to replace the annulled act is not affected by the same irregularities as those identified in the judgment annulling the original act.

Therefore, given that it followed from the judgment annulling a measure first, that the decision which was the subject of the action was deemed to have never existed and, second, that the Commission was required, under Article 176 of the Treaty, to take a further decision, the Court of First Instance was correct in ruling that the Commission could rely, in the new decision, on grounds other than those on which it based the annulled decision.

The possibility of a full review also implies that the Commission was not supposed, in the contested decision, to reiterate all the grounds for refusal provided for by Decision 94/90 on public access to documents to adopt a decision correctly implementing the judgment of the Court of First Instance but had simply to base its decision on those it considered, in exercising its discretion, to be applicable in the case.

see paras 28-32

3. So long as the Community legislature has not adopted general rules on the right of public access to documents held by the Community institutions, the institutions must take measures as to the processing of such requests by virtue of their power of internal organisation, which authorises them to take appropriate measures in order to ensure their internal operation in conformity with the interests of good administration.

Against that background, given the developments in this field, the Court of First Instance did not err in law in holding that, in the absence, at the time when the contested decision was adopted, of a principle or general rules of Community law expressly providing that the Commission was not empowered, under its power of internal organisation, to enact the authorship rule as provided for by the Code of Conduct adopted by Decision 94/90 according to which, where the document held by an institution was written by a natural or legal person, a Member State, another Community institution or body or any other national or international body, the application must be sent direct to the author, that rule could be applied in the case.

see paras 38, 40, 43

4. The aim pursued by Decision 94/90 on public access to Commission documents as well as being to ensure the internal operation of the Commission in conformity with the interests of good administration, is to provide the public with the widest possible access to documents held by the Commission, so that any exception to that right of access must be interpreted and applied strictly.

see paras 48-49