Nexans SA and Nexans France SAS v European Commission.
Date: 2014-06-25
21. In connection with the first part of the first ground of appeal raised by Nexans and Nexans France, as regards the first argument submitted by those parties alleging insufficient reasons in the judgment under appeal concerning the arguments put forward by the appellants as to the geographical scope of the suspected infringement, it is settled case-law that the obligation for the General Court, under Article 36 of the Statute of the Court of Justice, applicable to the General Court by virtue of the first paragraph of Article 53 thereof and Article 81 of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court, to state reasons 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. The reasoning of the General Court may therefore be implicit on condition that it enables the persons concerned to know the reason for the General Court’s decision and provides the Court of Justice with sufficient material for it to exercise its power of review (see, inter alia, France  v Commission , C‑601/11 P, EU:C:2013:465, paragraph 83, and Dow Chemical and Others  v Commission , C‑499/11 P, EU:C:2013:482, paragraph 56).
31. All that line of argument must be rejected. First of all, the statement of reasons required under Article 296 TFEU for measures of institutions of the European Union must be appropriate to the measure at issue and must disclose in a clear and unequivocal fashion the reasoning followed by the institution which adopted that measure in such a way as to enable the persons concerned to ascertain the reasons for it and to enable the competent Court of the European Union to exercise its jurisdiction to review legality ( Solvay  v Commission , C‑455/11 P, EU:C:2013:796, paragraph 90).
32. It is also settled case-law that the requirement to state reasons must be assessed by reference to the circumstances of the case, in particular the content of the measure in question, the nature of the reasons given and the interest which the addressees of the measure, or other parties to whom it is of direct and individual concern, may have in obtaining explanations. It is not necessary for the reasoning to specify all the relevant facts and points of law, since the question whether the statement of reasons meets the requirements of Article 296 TFEU must be assessed with regard not only to its wording but also to its context and to all the legal rules governing the matter in question ( Solvay  v Commission , EU:C:2013:796, paragraph 91 and the case-law cited).
34. Thus, so far as concerns, specifically, the Commission’s inspection decisions, it is apparent from Article 20(4) of Regulation No 1/2003 that those inspection decisions must indicate, inter alia, the subject and the objective of the inspection. That obligation to state specific reasons constitutes, as the Court of Justice has made clear, a fundamental requirement not only to show that the intervention envisaged within the undertakings concerned was proportional, but also to put those undertakings in a position to understand the scope of their duty to cooperate, while at the same time preserving their rights of the defence (see, to that effect, judgment in Hoechst  v Commission , 46/87 and 227/88, EU:C:1989:337, paragraph 29).
35. So far as concerns the argument of Nexans and Nexans France that the General Court failed to have regard to the Commission’s obligation to indicate in the decision at issue the market presumed to be the relevant market, which must, according to the appellants, include both a material and a geographical component, it must be recalled that, according to the case-law of the Court of Justice, the Commission is not required to communicate to the addressee of a decision ordering an investigation all the information at its disposal concerning the presumed infringements, or to make a precise legal analysis of those infringements, providing it clearly indicates the presumed facts which it intends to investigate (judgment in Dow Chemical Ibérica and Others  v Commission , 97/87 to 99/87, EU:C:1989:380, paragraph 45).
36. Although, admittedly, the Commission is obliged to indicate as precisely as possible the evidence sought and the matters to which the investigation must relate ( Roquette Frères , EU:C:2002:603, paragraph 83 and the case-law cited), it is, on the other hand, not essential in a decision ordering an inspection to define precisely the relevant market, to set out the exact legal nature of the presumed infringements or to indicate the period during which those infringements were committed, provided that that inspection decision contains the essential elements set out above (see, to that effect, Dow Chemical Ibérica and Others  v Commission , EU:C:1989:380, paragraph 46, and Roquette Frères , EU:C:2002:603, paragraph 82).
37. Having regard to the fact that inspections take place at the beginning of an investigation, the Commission still lacks, as the Advocate General observes at point 48 of her Opinion, precise information to make a specific legal assessment and must first verify the accuracy of its suspicions and the scope of the incidents which have taken place, the aim of the inspection being specifically to gather evidence relating to a suspected infringement (see, to that effect, Roquette Frères,  EU:C:2002:603, paragraph 55 and the case-law cited).
45. According to settled case-law, to allow a party to put forward for the first time before the Court of Justice a plea in law which it has not raised before the General Court would in effect allow that party to bring before the Court of Justice, whose jurisdiction in appeal proceedings is limited, a wider case than that heard by the General Court (judgment in Alliance One International and Standard Commercial Tobacco v Commission  and Commission  v Alliance One International and Other s, C‑628/10 P and C‑14/11 P, EU:C:2012:479, paragraph 111, and Groupe Gascogne  v Commission , C‑58/12 P, EU:C:2013:770, paragraph 35).
51. Under the second paragraph of Article 58 of the Statute of the Court of Justice, ‘[n]o appeal shall lie regarding only the amount of the costs or the party ordered to pay them’. In addition, according to settled case-law, where all the other grounds in an appeal have been rejected, any ground challenging the decision of the General Court on costs must be rejected as inadmissible by virtue of that provision ( Gualtieri  v Commission , C‑485/08 P, EU:C:2010:188, paragraph 111 and the case-law cited).