Keywords

Summary



Keywords

1. Procedure — Intervention — Plea in law, such as a plea of inadmissibility, not raised by the defendant — Inadmissible — (Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 40, fourth para.; Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, Art. 116(3))

2. Non-contractual liability — Conditions — Unlawfulness — Damage — Causal link — Failure to meet one of the conditions — Dismissal of an action for damages in its entirety — (Art. 288, second para., EC)

3. Acts of the institutions — Regulations — Direct applicability — Implementing power entailing the exercise of discretion granted to the Member States — Compatible — (Art. 249 EC)

4. Non-contractual liability — Conditions — Regulation or directive authorising a Member State to derogate from a Community customs allowance or fiscal exemption — Damage suffered by an exporter established in an adjacent non-member country — Causal link — None — (Art. 288, second para., EC)

Summary

1. Interveners must, under Article 116(3) of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, accept the case as they find it at the time of their intervention and their submissions in an application to intervene are, under the fourth paragraph of Article 40 of the Statute of the Court of Justice, limited to reinforcing the submissions of the main party in support of whom they intervene. An intervener is therefore not entitled to plead a ground of inadmissibility not set out in the form of order sought by the defendant.

see paras 47-48

2. In order for the Community to incur non-contractual liability, the applicant seeking damages must establish the unlawfulness of the alleged conduct of the institution concerned, actual damage, and the existence of a direct link of cause and effect between that conduct and the alleged damage, that is to say that the damage is a direct consequence of the conduct complained of, a matter which the applicant has the burden of proving. Since those three conditions are cumulative, failure to meet one of them is sufficient for an action for damages to be dismissed.

see paras 71-74

3. The fact that a Community regulation is directly applicable does not in any way prevent its provisions from empowering Member States to adopt the implementing measures ─ whether legislative, regulatory, administrative or financial ─ necessary for its actual implementation or the Member States from having a discretion for that purpose.

see para. 82

4. In adopting a regulation which authorises a Member State to derogate from application of a Community customs allowance relating to certain products and simply requires it to comply with a minimum amount for the allowance which is expressed in terms of value, the Council does not impose any obligation on the Member State concerned to make use of the derogation made available to it. It thus remains lawful for the national authorities to adopt in domestic legislation at any time the level of the generally applicable Community allowance in order to bring application of the derogation to an end.

Such a regulation cannot therefore be regarded as being directly at the root of damage in the form of loss of income linked to the sale of such products to travellers importing them into the Member State concerned, alleged by a business established in a non-member country with which that Member State shares a border, by reason of the setting of allowances by the Member State ' s authorities of an amount which the Community legislation did not require them to adopt.

Likewise, a directive limiting the quantities of certain products that are capable of qualifying for a fiscal exemption and which expressly states merely that the Member States may reduce those quantities ─ a power of which the national authorities make use ─ cannot be considered to be directly at the root of damage of that kind.

see paras 76-78, 80, 91-92, 94