Kingdom of Belgium v European Commission.
Date: 2018-02-20
26


By establishing recommendations as a specific category of EU acts and by stating expressly that they ‘have no binding force’, Article 288 TFEU intended to confer on the institutions which usually adopt recommendations a power to exhort and to persuade, distinct from the power to adopt acts having binding force.
31


That being said, it should be borne in mind that any provisions adopted by the institutions, whatever their form, which are intended to have binding legal effects are regarded as ‘challengeable acts’ for the purposes of Article 263 TFEU (see, to that effect, judgments of 31 March 1971, Commission v Council, AETR, 22/70, EU:C:1971:32, paragraphs 39 and 42, and of 25 October 2017, Romania v Commission, C‑599/15 P, EU:C:2017:801, paragraph 47 and the case-law cited).
32


In order to determine whether the contested act produces binding legal effects, it is necessary to examine the substance of that act and to assess those effects on the basis of objective criteria, such as the content of that act, taking into account, as appropriate, the context in which it was adopted and the powers of the institution which adopted the act (see, to that effect, judgments of 13 February 2014, Hungary v Commission, C‑31/13 P, EU:C:2014:70, paragraph 55 and the case-law cited, and of 25 October 2017, Slovakia v Commission, C‑593/15 P and C‑594/15 P, EU:C:2017:800, paragraph 47).
40


Furthermore, in so far as the second ground of appeal alleges a disregard by the General Court of the alleged reciprocity of the principle of sincere cooperation, it should be noted, first, as the General Court pointed out, essentially, in paragraph 55 of the order under appeal, that infringement proceedings and an action for annulment are legal remedies which serve different purposes and have different conditions governing admissibility, and, second, that the principle of sincere cooperation cannot have the effect of setting aside the conditions governing admissibility expressly laid down in Article 263 TFEU.
44


Moreover, even though Article 263 TFEU excludes the review, by the Court, of acts which are in the form of recommendations, Article 267 TFEU confers on the Court jurisdiction to deliver a preliminary ruling on the validity and interpretation of all acts of the EU institutions without exception (see, to that effect, judgments of 13 December 1989, Grimaldi, C‑322/88, EU:C:1989:646, paragraph 8, and of 13 June 2017, Florescu and Others, C‑258/14, EU:C:2017:448, paragraph 30).
49


It follows that all language versions of an EU act must, in principle, be recognised as having the same value. In order to maintain the uniform interpretation of EU law, in the case of divergence between those versions, the provision in question must therefore be interpreted by reference to the purpose and general scheme of the rules of which it forms part (see, to that effect, judgments of 2 April 1998, EMU Tabac and Others, C‑296/95, EU:C:1998:152, paragraph 36, and of 20 November 2003, Kyocera, C‑152/01, EU:C:2003:623, paragraphs 32 and 33 and the case-law cited).
50


Thus, the wording used in one of the language versions of an act cannot serve as the sole basis for the interpretation of that act, or be made to override the other language versions in that regard. Such an approach would be incompatible with the requirement of the uniform application of EU law (see, to that effect, judgments of 22 October 2009, Zurita García and Choque Cabrera, C‑261/08 and C‑348/08, EU:C:2009:648, paragraph 55 and the case-law cited, and of 9 March 2017, GE Healthcare, C‑173/15, EU:C:2017:195, paragraph 65 and the case-law cited).