Keywords

Summary



Keywords

++++

1. Non-contractual liability ° Conditions ° Legislative measure involving choices of economic policy ° Sufficiently flagrant breach of a superior rule of law protecting individuals ° Conclusion of agreements concerning fishing off the coast of Senegal and Guinea-Bissau ° Principles of exercising due care and ensuring good administration, of protection of legitimate expectations and of legal certainty ° Breach ° None ° Liability not incurred

(EC Treaty, Arts 43, 215, second para., and 228; Council Regulations Nos 2212/80, 2213/80, 1235/90 and 420/91)

2. Non-contractual liability ° Conditions ° Administrative fault causing damage ° No causal link between the fault and the damage ° Liability not incurred

(EC Treaty, Art. 215, second para.)

Summary

1. A shipowner whose vessel was seized, although it held a fishing licence granted by a non-member State with which the Community had concluded a fishing agreement, whilst fishing in a zone which was the subject of a dispute between that State and another non-member State, which, despite itself being bound to the Community by a fishing agreement, carried out the seizure in order to stop fishing activities which it considered to be illegal on the ground that no licence had been sought from its own authorities, cannot claim that the Community has incurred liability towards it when concluding fishing agreements with the two non-member States in question.

The conclusion of fishing agreements with non-member States is part of the legislative activity aimed at implementing the common agricultural policy so that in order for the Community to incur liability it must be possible to establish a sufficiently flagrant breach of a superior rule of law protecting individuals brought about by the institutions' acting in a way which manifestly and gravely disregards the limits on the exercise of their powers or failing to act when they had the obligation to do so.

The institutions cannot be accused of having acted in breach of the principle that due care must be exercised and good administration ensured in the negotiation and conclusion of fishing agreements with the two non-member States in question without making clear the conditions in which the fishing activities of Community fishermen would be carried on in the disputed zone. It was not in fact possible to ask for such clarification to be included in those agreements without interfering, or at least giving the impression of interfering, in the matters of the non-member States in question, whose dispute was pending before the International Court of Justice, and thus compromising the success of the negotiations for recognizing Community fishermen' s fishing rights.

Nor can the institutions be accused of having disregarded the principle of legal certainty in relation to the shipowner in question because, if it was in fact faced with some uncertainty as regards its fishing activities in the disputed zone, the reason for this lay not in the agreements concluded by the Community but in the dispute between the two non-member States. That uncertainty, against which the shipowner had to take precautions, was not such as to prohibit the conclusion of the fishing agreements with those States.

2. Even if the Commission had committed an administrative fault in issuing a fishing licence to a Community shipowner in the name of a non-member State without warning him, or having him warned by his national authorities, of the risk which he was running in fishing in part of the fishing zone covered by that licence by reason of the fact that the rights of that non-member State were disputed by the other non-member State, such conduct cannot give rise to liability on the part of the Community towards the shipowner concerned when one of its vessels is seized by the other non-member State, where it is proved that the master of the seized vessel was aware of the situation and therefore of the risk which he was taking in fishing in the disputed zone.