Case T-169/01: Action brought on 24 July 2001 by SAGEM against the Commission of the European Communities
Date: 2001-10-13
Institutions: Court of First Instance
Subjects: European Commission, action for annulment (EU), award of contract, electronics industry, equal treatment, invitation to tender

13.10.2001

EN

Official Journal of the European Communities

C 289/29

Action brought on 23 July 2001 by Lucchini S.p.A. against
the Commission of the European Communities

(Case T-166/01)

(2001/C 289/68)

(Language of the case: Italian)

been considered only environmental to be production
investments and thus applied rules which were not
applicable to the contested investments. Once it had
established that the investments notified related only to
the environment and not to production, the Commission
should have made its decision on the basis only of the
scheme of rules in Article 3 of the steel aid code which is
applicable in this case and not of the rules which govern
the Commission’s monitoring activities in cases in which
there are production investments as well as environmen-
tal investments.

An action against the Commission of the European Communi-
ties was brought before the Court of Justice of the European
Communities on 23 July 2001 by Lucchini S.p.A., represented
by Giovanni Vezzoli.

The applicant claims that the Court should:

— Internal inconsistencies in the reasoning of the Com-
mission which, while holding the investments notified to
be merely in production, criticised the Italian authorities
for not making any distinction between production costs
and environment costs, a distinction which it could make
only if the investments were held by the Commission to
be environmental.

— as regards its main claim on the substance: annul Article 1
of the Commission Decision of 21 December 2000
(C(2000) 4368, OJ 2001 L 163 of 20 June 2001), where
the Commission declared the State aid which Italy was
planning to implement for Lucchini SpA amounting to
ITL 13,5 billion (EUR 6,98 million) to be incompatible
with the common market;

— Failure to state reasons, in so far as the defendant did not
furnish any objective account of the reasons why it
reached the conclusions which led it to consider the aid
notified incompatible with the common market, nor
of the reasons why it considered that the contested
investments related to production installations rather
than environmental structures.

— in any event: order the Commission to bear the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The contested decision closes a procedure which began with
the formal notification of the Commission by Italy under
Article 3 of the steel aid code of a plan for state aid for
Lucchini SpA for investments for environmental purposes to
be made at its plant in Piombino. In that procedure, the
the investments notified were
defendant maintained that
primarily for the purposes of production rather than of
benefit to the environment and were moreover investments
necessitated by other production investments for the modern-
isation of the plant at Piombino and that, as such, they were
not eligible for State aid programmes.

The applicant relies on the following pleas in support of its
claims:

— Misuse of powers by reason of misrepresentation of the
facts in so far as the Commission made a manifest error
of assessment in evaluating without stating any reasons
the investments notified, described by the Commission
itself as being for both production and environmental
purposes.

— Breach and misapplication of rules of law, in so far as the
defendant considered investments which should have

— Differences in the treatment of the applicant and that of
other undertakings in certain important points of the
reasoning of the Commission relating to aid granted in
similar cases.

Action brought on 24 July 2001 by SAGEM against the
Commission of the European Communities

(Case T-169/01)

(2001/C 289/69)

(Language of the case: English)

An action against the Commission of the European Communi-
ties was brought before the Court of First Instance of the
European Communities on 24 July 2001 by SAGEM SA,
having its registered office in Paris, represented by Dominique
Berlin of Willkie Farr & Gallagher, Paris (France).

C 289/30

EN

Official Journal of the European Communities

13.10.2001

The applicant claims that the Court should:

— annul

the Commission’s decision not

the
SAGEM’s tender submitted for the Eurodac AFIS Central
Unit;

to accept

— annul the Commission’s decision to award the contract

for the Eurodac AFIS Central unit to BULL.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The applicant in the present case, a company incorporated
under French law, seeks the annulment of the Commission’s
decisions rejecting the tender which it submitted in response
to invitation to tender no. DG JAI A2/2000/002 concerning
the contract for the ‘EURODAC’ Automated Fingerprint identi-
fication System (AFIS) Central Unit, and accepting the tender
submitted by BULL.

In support of
following pleas in law:

its claims the applicant puts forward the

— infringement of the duty to state the reasons on which
challenged decisions are based. It alleges in this respect
that the Commission

— did not establish whether the qualifying criteria had

been fulfilled;

— did not provide the detailed marks corresponding to

the weighting of each technical criterion;

— compared inappropriately the technical perform-
ances of the tenders and evaluated them on different
financial grounds, and

— amended the purpose of the benchmark tests, added
a rule to compare the variable costs of the tenders
and took into account only a few items of the
financial compulsory reply form, although the Ten-
dering Specifications provided that all the items
were to be taken into account.

— Manifest error of assessment. It is pointed out in this
regard that the Commission assessed the tenders by using
different bases. Concerning the benchmark tests,
in
particular the performance test, the Commission con-
cluded that BULL’s solution was faster than the applicant’s
whereas none of the tenderers used the same number of
pieces of equipment. Concerning the financial evaluation,
the Commission used different bases to compare the
operational support proposed by the tenders.

Action brought on 24 July 2001 by Vieira Argentina SA
against the Commission of the European Communities

(Case T-170/01)

(2001/C 289/70)

— provided very partial results of the benchmark tests;

(Language of the case: Spanish)

— could not allege protection of business secrets, and

— provided unclear and equivocal explanations, as
regards both the selected tenderer’s identity and the
question relating to high matching accuracy.

— infringement of principles of equal treatment and of

transparency, in as much as the Commission:

— gave the tenderers very different information relating
to the same technical requirements of the EURO-
DAC AFIS Central Unit;

— amended the technical criterion relating to high
matching accuracy during the evaluation procedure;

An action against the Commission of the European Communi-
ties was brought before the Court of First Instance of the
European Communities on 24 July 2001 by Vieira Argentina
SA, a company with registered offices in Buenos Aires,
represented by D. Ramo´ n Garcı´a-Gallardo and Marı´a Dolores
Domı´nguez Pérez, Lawyers.

The applicant claims that the Court should:

— declare that, by failing to define its position within a
period of two months from the date when notice was
given, being 18 May 2001, the Commission failed to
fulfil its obligations;