Markku Sahlstedt and Others v Commission of the European Communities.
Date: 2009-04-23
22. It should be borne in mind that the rule laid down in the fourth paragraph of Article 230 EC that proceedings brought by a natural or legal person against a decision addressed to another person are admissible only if the decision is of direct and individual concern to the former raises an absolute bar to proceeding which the Community judicature may consider at any time, even of its own motion (to that effect, see, inter alia, Case C‑341/00 P Conseil national des professions de l’automobile and Others  v Commission  [2001] ECR I‑5263, paragraph 32, and Case C‑176/06 P Stadtwerke Schwäbisch Hall and Others  v Commission  [2007] ECR I‑170, paragraph 18).
26. It should be recalled that, according to settled case-law, persons other than those to whom a decision is addressed may claim to be individually concerned only if that decision affects them by reason of certain attributes which are peculiar to them or by reason of circumstances in which they are differentiated from all other persons and by virtue of those factors distinguishes them individually just as in the case of the person addressed by such a decision (see, inter alia, Case 25/62 Plaumann  v Commission  [1963] ECR 95, at 107, and Case C‑78/03 P Commission  v Aktionsgemeinschaft Recht und Eigentum  [2005] ECR I‑10737, paragraph 33).
27. A decision such as the contested decision falls under Article 4 of the Habitats Directive, which sets up a procedure for classifying natural sites as special areas of conservation (‘SACs’), which is intended in particular – as is clear from Article 3(2) of that directive – to permit the establishment of a coherent European ecological network of SACs to be known as ‘Natura 2000’, composed of sites hosting the natural habitat types and habitats of the species listed in Annex I and Annex II to the directive respectively, to enable them to be maintained or, where appropriate, restored at a favourable conservation status in their range (see, to that effect, Case C‑317/98 First Corporate Shipping  [2000] ECR I‑9235, paragraphs 19 and 20).
29. It should be borne in mind, however, that the Court has repeatedly held that the fact that a provision is, by its nature and scope, a provision of general application inasmuch as it applies to the economic operators concerned in general, does not of itself prevent that provision from being of individual concern to some (see, to that effect, Case C‑309/89 Codorniu  [1994] ECR I‑1853, paragraph 19, and Joined Cases C‑182/03 and C‑217/03 Belgium and Forum 187  v Commission  [2006] ECR I‑5479, paragraph 58).
30. The Court has held in that regard that where the decision affects a group of persons who were identified or identifiable when that measure was adopted by reason of criteria specific to the members of the group, those persons may be individually concerned by that measure inasmuch as they form part of a limited class of economic operators (Case C‑125/06 P Commission  v Infront WM  [2008] ECR I‑1451, paragraph 71 and the case-law cited therein).
31. However, the fact that it is possible to determine more or less precisely the number, or even the identity, of the persons to whom a measure applies by no means implies that that measure must be regarded as being of individual concern to those persons where it is established that that application takes effect by virtue of an objective legal or factual situation defined by the measure in question (see, in particular, Case C‑451/98 Antillean Rice Mills  v Council  [2001] ECR I‑8949, paragraph 52; the order in Case C‑96/01 P Galileo and Galileo International  v Council  [2002] ECR I‑4025, paragraph 38; and the order in Case C‑503/07 P Saint-Gobain Glass Deutschland  v Commission  [2008] ECR I‑2217, paragraph 70 and the case-law cited therein).
43. In that regard, it is sufficient to bear in mind – as can be seen, essentially, from paragraph 63 of the order under appeal – that individuals are entitled to effective judicial protection of the rights they derive from the Community legal order. The judicial protection of natural or legal persons who are unable, by reason of the conditions for admissibility laid down in the fourth paragraph of Article 230 EC, to challenge directly Community measures of the same kind as the contested decision must be guaranteed effectively by a right of action before the national courts. Those courts are under a duty, in accordance with the principle of cooperation in good faith laid down by Article 10 EC, so far as possible, to interpret and apply national procedural rules governing the exercise of rights of action in a way that enables those persons to challenge before the courts the legality of any decision or other national measure relative to the application to them of a Community act such as that at issue, by pleading the illegality of such an act and by asking those courts to make a reference to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling on legality (Case C‑15/06 P Regione Siciliana  v Commission  [2007] ECR I‑2591, paragraph 39).