European Parliament v Council of the European Communities.
Date: 1992-07-07
9 That argument, which the United Kingdom bases on the judgment of the Court in Case C-70/88 Parliament v Council [1990] ECR I-2041, cannot be upheld. As is apparent from paragraph 27 of that judgment, an action for annulment brought by the Parliament is admissible provided that the action seeks only to safeguard its prerogatives and is founded only on submissions alleging their infringement.
11 It must be borne in mind at the outset that, as the Court has held (primarily in its judgment in Case 45/86 Commission v Council [1987] ECR 1493, paragraph 13), it follows from the very wording of Article 235 that recourse to that provision as the legal basis for a measure is justified only where no other provision of the Treaty gives the Community institutions the necessary power to adopt the measure in question.
13 The Court has consistently held that, in the context of the organization of the powers of the Community, the choice of a legal basis for a measure must be based on objective factors which are amenable to judicial review. Those factors include, in particular, the aim and content of the measure (see, in particular, the judgment in Case C-300/89 Commission v Council [1991] ECR I-2867, paragraph 10).
15 As the Court pointed out in paragraph 34 of the judgment in Raulin, cited above, the right to equality of treatment regarding the conditions of access to vocational training applies not only to the requirements laid down by the educational establishment in question, such as payment of enrolment fees, but also to any measure that may prevent the exercise of that right. It is clear that a student admitted to a course of vocational training might be unable to attend the course if he did not have a right of residence in the Member State where the course takes place. It follows that the principle of non-discrimination with regard to conditions of access to vocational training deriving from Articles 7 and 128 of the EEC Treaty implies that a national of a Member State who has been admitted to a vocational training course in another Member State enjoys, in this respect, a right of residence for the duration of the course.
18 In that regard, it should be noted that the general principle laid down in the first paragraph of Article 7 can only apply subject to the special provisions of the Treaty (see in particular the judgment in Case 8/77 Sagulo, Brenca and Bakhouche [1977] ECR 1495, paragraph 11) and that the purpose of the second paragraph of Article 7 is to enable the Council to adopt, having regard to the rights and interests concerned, the provisions needed in order effectively to eliminate discrimination on grounds of nationality in areas where its powers are not based on any of the special provisions governing the various fields covered by the Treaty. However, measures adopted under the second paragraph of Article 7 of the Treaty do not necessarily have to be limited to rules governing the rights which derive from the first paragraph of that article but may also be concerned with matters in respect of which rules appear to be required in order to ensure that those rights can be effectively exercised.
22 The Commission, the Netherlands Government and the United Kingdom have asked the Court, in the event of the annulment of the directive, to limit the effects of such annulment. The Parliament expressly stated that it had no objection to any such limitation.
26 In those circumstances, important reasons of legal certainty, comparable to those which operate in cases where certain regulations are annulled, justify the Court' s exercising the power expressly conferred on it by Article 174(2) of the EEC Treaty in such cases, and indicating which effects of the contested directive are to be maintained.