Commission of the European Communities v Republic of Poland.
Date: 2009-07-16
42. As a preliminary point, it should be noted that, under Article 38(1)(c) of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice and the related case-law, an application must state the subject-matter of the proceedings and a summary of the pleas in law on which the application is based, and that that statement must be sufficiently clear and precise to enable the defendant to prepare a defence and the Court to rule on the application. It follows that the essential points of law and of fact on which an action is based must be indicated coherently and intelligibly in the application itself and that the heads of claim must be set out unambiguously so that the Court does not rule ultra petita  or indeed fail to rule on a complaint (Case C-475/07 Commission  v Poland [2009] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 43, and the case-law cited).
43. The Court has also held that, in an action brought under Article 226 EC, the application must set out the complaints coherently and with precision, so that the Member State and the Court can know exactly the full extent of the alleged infringement of Community law, a condition which must be satisfied if the Member State is to be able to present an effective defence and the Court to determine whether there has been a breach of obligations, as alleged (see, in particular, Commission  v Poland , paragraph 44 and the case-law cited).
53. It should be borne in mind that, according to settled case-law, it is for the Member States to show that the conditions permitting a derogation from Article 28 EC are satisfied (see, to that effect, Case C-110/05 Commission  v Italy  [2009] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 62). Thus, in particular, where a Member State against which infringement proceedings are brought relies, in its defence, on a justification based on Article 30 EC, the Court is required to examine a justification of that kind only in so far as it is common ground or properly established that the national legislation concerned does in fact pursue the purposes that the defendant Member State attributes to it (see, to that effect, Case 124/81 Commission  v United Kingdom  [1983] ECR 203, paragraph 35; Case C-320/03 Commission  v Austria  [2005] ECR I-9871, paragraph 71; and Case C-141/07 Commission  v Germany  [2008] ECR I-0000, paragraph 47).
55. Clearly, in those circumstances, public morality is not really being invoked as a separate justification, but as an aspect of the justification relating to protection of human health and the environment, which is precisely the concern of Directive 2001/18 in the present context (see, to that effect, Case C-1/96 Compassion in World Farming  [1998] ECR I-1251, paragraph 66).
56. However, a Member State cannot rely in that manner on the views of a section of public opinion in order unilaterally to challenge a harmonising measure adopted by the Community institutions (see Compassion in World Farming , paragraph 67). As the Court observed in a case specifically concerning Directive 2001/18, a Member State may not plead difficulties of implementation which emerge at the stage when a Community measure is put into effect, such as difficulties relating to opposition on the part of certain individuals, to justify a failure to comply with obligations and time-limits laid down by Community law (see Case C-121/07 Commission  v France  [2008] ECR I-0000, paragraph 72).
62. Such a general prohibition also clearly infringes Article 16(1) of Directive 2002/53, which places the Member States under an obligation not to make seed varieties accepted in accordance with that directive subject to any marketing restrictions relating to variety, unless they rely on the exceptions – not applicable in the present case – set out in Article 16(2). It is common ground in that regard, as the Commission states, that a certain number of varieties which have been accepted in accordance with Directive 2002/53 and which accordingly appear in the common catalogue of varieties of agricultural plant species, referred to in Article 17 thereof, are genetically modified varieties.