Dyson Ltd v European Commission.
Date: 2017-05-11
30


It must be borne in mind that, in an appeal, the Court of Justice has no jurisdiction to establish the facts or, in principle, to examine the evidence which the General Court accepted in support of those facts. Provided that the evidence has been properly obtained and the general principles of law and the rules of procedure in relation to the burden of proof and the taking of evidence have been observed, it is for the General Court alone to assess the value which should be attached to the evidence produced to it. Save where the evidence adduced before the General Court has been distorted, that assessment therefore does not constitute a point of law which is subject to review by the Court of Justice (judgment of 18 January 2017, Toshiba v Commission, C‑623/15 P, not published, EU:C:2017:21, paragraph 39 and the case-law cited).
31


The jurisdiction of the Court of Justice to review the findings of fact by the General Court therefore extends, inter alia, to the substantive inaccuracy of those findings as apparent from the documents in the file, distortion of the evidence, the legal characterisation of the evidence, and whether the rules relating to the burden of proof and the taking of evidence have been observed (judgments of 25 January 2007, Sumitomo Metal Industries and Nippon Steel v Commission, C‑403/04 P and C‑405/04 P, EU:C:2007:52, paragraph 39, and of 19 December 2013, Siemens and Others v Commission, C‑239/11 P, C‑489/11 P and C‑498/11 P, not published, EU:C:2013:866, paragraph 39).
37


It must be recalled, first, that, in the context of an appeal, the purpose of review by the Court of Justice is inter alia to consider whether the General Court addressed, to the requisite legal standard, all the arguments raised by the appellant and, secondly, that the plea alleging that the General Court failed to rule on arguments relied on at first instance amounts essentially to relying on a breach of the obligation to state reasons which derives from Article 36 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union, applicable to the General Court by virtue of the first paragraph of Article 53 of that statute, and from Article 117 of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court (see, to that effect, judgment of 20 May 2010, Gogos v Commission, C‑583/08 P, EU:C:2010:287, paragraph 29, and order of 13 December 2012, Alliance One International v Commission, C‑593/11 P, not published, EU:C:2012:804, paragraph 27).
38


It is settled case-law that the Court of Justice does not require the General Court to provide an account which follows exhaustively and one by one all the arguments put forward by the parties to the case, and that the General Court’s reasoning may therefore be implicit, on condition that it enables the persons concerned to know why it has not upheld their arguments and provides the Court of Justice with sufficient material for it to exercise its power of review (order of 13 December 2012, Alliance One International v Commission, C‑593/11 P, not published, EU:C:2012:804, paragraph 28, and judgment of 26 October 2016, PT Musim Mas v Council, C‑468/15 P, EU:C:2016:803, paragraph 71).
53


So, while, as the General Court correctly observed in paragraph 38 of the judgment under appeal, in the exercise of the powers conferred on them the EU authorities have broad discretion in particular where they are called on to undertake complex assessments and evaluations, it must first be determined whether they are indeed acting within the limits of the powers given to them and, more particularly, in a case such as the present one concerning a delegated power under Article 290 TFEU, it must be ascertained whether the EU authorities have exceeded the powers conferred on them by the enabling act, bearing in mind in particular that such a delegated power must in any event comply with the essential elements of the enabling act and come within the regulatory framework as defined by the basic legislative act (see, to that effect, judgment of 17 March 2016, Parliament v Commission, C‑286/14, EU:C:2016:183, paragraph 30 and the case-law cited).
55


It should be recalled, however, that, according to settled case-law of the Court, if the grounds of a decision of the General Court disclose an infringement of EU law but its operative part is shown to be well founded on other legal grounds, such an infringement is not capable of bringing about the annulment of that decision, and a substitution of grounds must be made (judgment of 22 September 2016, Pensa Pharma v EUIPO, C‑442/15 P, not published, EU:C:2016:720, paragraph 51 and the case-law cited).
57


According to settled case-law of the Court, the lawfulness of an EU measure must be assessed on the basis of the facts and the law as they stood at the time when the measure was adopted (judgment of 3 September 2015, Inuit Tapariit Kanatami and Others v Commission, C‑398/13 P, EU:C:2015:535, paragraph 22 and the case-law cited). The lawfulness of the regulation at issue must therefore be assessed by reference to the facts and law as they were on 3 May 2013.
58


It must be recalled, first, that the possibility of delegating powers provided for in Article 290 TFEU aims to enable the legislature to concentrate on the essential elements of a piece of legislation and on the non-essential elements in respect of which it finds it appropriate to legislate, while entrusting the Commission with the task of ‘supplementing’ certain non-essential elements of the legislative act adopted or ‘amending’ such elements within the framework of the power delegated to it (judgment of 17 March 2016, Parliament v Commission, C‑286/14, EU:C:2016:183, paragraph 54).
59


It follows that the essential rules on the matter in question must be laid down in the basic legislation and cannot be delegated (see, to that effect, judgments of 5 September 2012, Parliament v Council, C‑355/10, EU:C:2012:516, paragraph 64, and of 10 September 2015, Parliament v Council, C‑363/14, EU:C:2015:579, paragraph 46).
61


The essential elements of basic legislation are those which, in order to be adopted, require political choices falling within the responsibilities of the EU legislature (judgment of 5 September 2012, Parliament v Council, C‑355/10, EU:C:2012:516, paragraph 65).
62


Identifying the elements of a matter which must be categorised as essential must be based on objective factors amenable to judicial review, and requires account to be taken of the characteristics and particular features of the field concerned (judgment of 22 June 2016, DK Recycling und Roheisen v Commission, C‑540/14 P, EU:C:2016:469, paragraph 48 and the case-law cited).