Foshan Shunde Yongjian Housewares & Hardware Co. Ltd v Council of the European Union.
Date: 2009-10-01
56. However, according to the established case‑law of the Court of Justice, the Court of First Instance has exclusive jurisdiction to find the facts, save where a substantive inaccuracy in its findings is attributable to the documents submitted to it, and to appraise those facts. That appraisal thus does not, save where the clear sense of the evidence has been distorted, constitute a point of law which is subject, as such, to review by the Court of Justice (see Case C‑390/95 P Antillean Rice Mills and Others v Commission  [1999] ECR I‑769, paragraph 29; Case C‑237/98 P Dorsch Consult  v Council and Commission  [2000] ECR I‑4549, paragraph 35; and Case C‑425/07 P AEPI v Commission  [2009] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 44).
81. As regards the arguments put forward by the appellant in support of its second ground of appeal, it should be noted at the outset that the Court of First Instance was correct in finding at paragraph 71 of the judgment under appeal that failure to comply with the 10-day period prescribed in Article 20(5) of the basic regulation can result in annulment of the contested regulation only where there is a possibility that, due to that irregularity, the administrative procedure could have resulted in a different outcome and thus in fact adversely affected the applicant’s rights of defence (see, to that effect, Case 30/78 Distillers Company  v Commission  [1980] ECR 2229, paragraph 26; Case C‑142/87 Belgium v Commission, ‘Tubemeuse’  [1990] ECR I‑959, paragraph 48; and Case C‑194/99 P Thyssen Stahl  v Commission  [2003] ECR I‑10821, paragraph 31).
83. According to settled case‑law, respect for the rights of the defence is, in all proceedings initiated against a person which are liable to culminate in a measure adversely affecting that person, a fundamental principle of Community law which must be guaranteed even in the absence of any rules governing the proceedings in question. That principle requires that the addressees of decisions which significantly affect their interests should be placed in a position in which they may effectively make known their views (see, inter alia, Case C‑32/95 P Commission  v Lisrestal and Others [1996] ECR I‑5373, paragraph 21; Case C‑462/98 P Mediocurso  v Commission [2000] ECR I‑7183, paragraph 36; and Case C‑287/02 Spain  v Commission  [2005] ECR I‑5093, paragraph 37).
93. Respect for the rights of the defence is of crucial importance in procedures such as that followed in the present case (see, to that effect, Case C‑49/88 Al-Jubail Fertilizer v Commission  [1991] ECR I‑3187, paragraphs 15 to 17, and by analogy, Case C‑113/04 P Technische Unie v Commission  [2006] ECR I‑8831, paragraph 55).
94. Moreover, according to the case‑law of the Court of Justice, the appellant cannot be required to show that the Commission’s decision would have been different in content but simply that such a possibility cannot be totally ruled out, since it would have been better able to defend itself had there been no procedural error (see Thyssen Stahl  v Commission , paragraph 31 and the case‑law cited).
114. Since it cannot therefore be ruled out that the Commission would have proposed to the Council definitive measures more advantageous to the appellant if it had been aware of the content of that letter and that, in that case, the Council would have accepted such a proposal, it is clear that the appellant’s rights of defence were in fact adversely affected by the failure to comply with the 10‑day period prescribed in Article 20(5) of the basic regulation, which led to the Commission not taking account of the content of that letter at the appropriate time.