Nordspedizionieri di Danielis Livio & C. Snc, Livio Danielis and Domenico D’Alessandro v Commission of the European Communities.
Date: 2007-10-18
28. According to settled case‑law, to allow a party to put forward for the first time before the Court of Justice a plea in law which it has not raised before the Court of First Instance would be to allow it to bring before the Court, whose jurisdiction in appeals is limited, a case of wider ambit than that which came before the Court of First Instance. In an appeal the Court’s jurisdiction is thus confined to review of the findings of law on the pleas argued before the Court of First Instance (see, in particular, Case C-68/05 P Koninklijke Coöperatie Cosun  v Commission  [2006] ECR I‑10367, paragraph 96, and Case C‑354/04 P Gestoras Pro Amnistía and Others  v Council  [2007] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 30).
30. In addition, regarding the appellants’ categorisation of the present plea as one concerning a matter of public interest, it must be borne in mind that the sole aim of Article 13 of Regulation No 1430/79 is to enable economic operators, when certain special conditions are satisfied and in the absence of negligence or deception, to be exempted from payment of duties due from them and not to enable them to contest the actual principle of an amount being due (see, in particular, Joined Cases C‑121/91 and C‑122/91 CT Control (Rotterdam) and JCT Benelux  v Commission  [1993] ECR I‑3873, paragraph 43). It follows that the appellants may properly rely, in relation to the contested decision, only on pleas seeking to show the existence in this case of special circumstances and the absence of negligence or deception on their part, and not on pleas seeking to show that the decisions of the competent national authorities requiring them to pay the duties at issue were unlawful (see CT Control (Rotterdam) and JCT Benelux  v Commission , paragraph 44). The Court of First Instance did not therefore have to raise of its own motion a provision which it did not have the jurisdiction to apply.
41. It is appropriate to point out that Article 13(1) of Regulation No 1430/79 includes a general fairness clause intended to cover the exceptional situation in which a declarant might find himself in comparison with other operators engaged in the same business ( De Haan , paragraph 52). The appellants submit that the existence of a special situation for the purpose of that case‑law may be justified by the failure to fulfil the obligations arising under the bilateral agreement, but which the Court of First Instance interpreted incorrectly. In order to be able to assess whether the present plea in law is well founded, it is, consequently, necessary to determine whether the bilateral agreement actually imposes on the customs authorities the obligation to indicate every consignment of fiscally sensitive goods, in particular cigarettes.
49. It should be recalled that, under Article 225(1) EC, an appeal lies on a point of law only. The Court of First Instance thus has sole jurisdiction to find and appraise the relevant facts and to appraise the evidence, save where those facts and that evidence have been distorted (see, to that effect, Case C‑136/92 P Commission  v Brazzelli Lualdi and Others  [1994] ECR I‑1981, paragraphs 49 and 66, and Case C‑312/00 P Commission  v Camar and Tico  [2002] ECR I‑11355, paragraph 69).
55. It follows from Article 225 EC, the first paragraph of Article 58 of the Statute of the Court of Justice and Article 112(1), first subparagraph, (c) of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice that an appeal must indicate precisely the contested elements of the order or judgment which the appellant seeks to have set aside and also the legal arguments specifically advanced in support of the appeal. That requirement is not satisfied by an appeal which, without even including an argument specifically identifying the error of law allegedly vitiating the contested judgment, confines itself to reproducing the pleas in law and arguments previously submitted to the Court of First Instance. Such an appeal amounts in reality to no more than a request for re-examination of the application submitted to the Court of First Instance, which the Court of Justice does not have jurisdiction to undertake (Case C‑352/98 P Bergaderm and Goupil  v Commission  [2000] ECR I‑5291, paragraphs 34 and 35, and Case C‑76/01 P Eurocoton and Others v Council  [2003] ECR I‑10091, paragraphs 46 and 47).