CELEX: 62013CN0124
Language: en
Date: 2013-03-14 00:00:00
Title: Case C-124/13: Action brought on 14 March 2013 — European Parliament v Council of the European Union

1.6.2013   
            
            
               EN
            
            
               Official Journal of the European Union
            
            
               C 156/21
            
         Action brought on 14 March 2013 — European Parliament v Council of the European Union
   (Case C-124/13)
   2013/C 156/32
   Language of the case: English
   
      Parties
   
   
      Applicant: European Parliament (represented by: L.G. Knudsen, I. Liukkonen and R. Kaškina, Agents)
   
      Defendant: Council of the European Union
   
      The applicant claims that the Court should:
   
   
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               annul Council Regulation (EU) No 1243/2012 of 19 December 2012 amending Regulation (EC) No 1342/2008 establishing a long-term plan for cod stocks and the fisheries exploiting those stocks (1); and
            
         
               —
            
            
               order Council of the European Union to pay the costs.
            
         
      Pleas in law and main arguments
   
   The European Parliament raises a single plea of annulment of the contested Regulation on the grounds that Article 43(3) TFEU is not the appropriate legal basis for the contested Regulation and that it should have been adopted on the basis of Article 43(2) TFEU, as the latter provision gives the European Union legislature the necessary powers for adopting an act with the aim and content of the contested Regulation. The legal basis used excluded Parliament from taking part in the adoption of the act, whereas Article 43(2) TFEU provides for the ordinary legislative procedure to be followed. The erroneous legal basis must lead to the annulment of the contested Regulation.
   Under the first limb of its plea Parliament asserts that each multiannual plan, such as that at stake in the present case, as a fish stocks conservation and management tool, forms a whole which only contains provisions in the pursuit of the sustainability and conservation objectives of the CFP and must therefore be adopted in its entirety under Article 43(2) TFEU.
   The second limb of Parliament's plea consists of the assertion that the adoption of the contested Regulation separately from the remainder of the Commission proposal constitutes in any event an abuse of the procedure and empties the established case-law on the choice of legal basis according to the centre of gravity of the act, of its contents. Splitting the proposal enabled the Council to artificially choose a separate legal basis for certain elements of the proposed act, whereas these would have been absorbed by the single legal basis of Article 43(2) TFEU had the act been adopted in the form of the initially proposed whole.
   
      (1)  OJ L 352, p. 10