Jean-Marie Le Pen v European Parliament.
Date: 2005-07-07
39. Since the Parliament and the French Government submit in their respective pleadings that a large part of the appeal is inadmissible on the ground that the appellant merely reproduces his pleas in law to the Court of First Instance without indicating precisely the contested passages of the judgment under appeal or the legal arguments specifically advanced in support of the appeal, it should be noted that under 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, an appeal must indicate precisely the contested elements of the 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 judgment under appeal, merely repeats or reproduces verbatim the pleas in law and arguments previously submitted to the Court of First Instance (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).
40. However, provided that the appellant challenges the interpretation or application of Community law by the Court of First Instance, the points of law examined at first instance may be discussed again in the course of an appeal. Indeed, if an appellant could not thus base his appeal on pleas in law and arguments already relied on before the Court of First Instance, an appeal would be deprived of part of its purpose (see, inter alia, Case C-41/00 P Interporc  v Commission  [2003] ECR I‑2125, paragraph 17, and the order of 11 November 2003 in Case C-488/01 P Martinez  v Parliament  [2003] ECR I-13355, paragraph 39).
46. As regards the appellant’s main argument alleging a distortion of the scope of Article 12(2) of the 1976 Act and a mistaken assessment by the Court of First Instance of the true legal nature of the contested act which alone brings about a change in his legal position, the contention that, in order to determine whether an act may be the subject of a challenge in an action under Article 230 EC, it is the substance of the act in question and the intention of its author which should be taken into account, is well founded. According to settled case-law, the form in which an act or decision is adopted is in principle irrelevant to the right to challenge such acts or decisions by way of an application for annulment (see, in particular, Commission  v Council , cited above, paragraph 42, and IBM  v Commission , paragraph 9).
50. Thus, as regards first of all the appellant’s argument based on the very wording of Article 12(2) of the 1976 Act which refers to an obligation for the Parliament to ‘take note’ that a seat has fallen vacant pursuant to national provisions in force in a Member State, that provision, far from supporting the appellant’s argument, clearly highlights the complete lack of discretion on the part of the Parliament in the matter. In that particular case, the role of the Parliament is not to declare that the seat is vacant but, as the Court of First Instance rightly held in paragraph 88 of the judgment under appeal, merely to take note that the seat is vacant as already established by the national authorities, whereas in the other cases concerning, inter alia, the resignation or death of one of its members, that institution has a more active role to play since Parliament itself establishes that there is a vacancy and informs the Member State in question thereof.