Commission of the European Communities v Italian Republic.
Date: 1997-09-16
14 Under Article 169 of the Treaty the Commission may bring an action for failure to bring obligations before the Court only after having given the Member State concerned an opportunity to submit its observations.  Thus, according to settled case-law, the purpose of the letter of formal notice at the pre-litigation stage of the procedure for establishing a State's failure to fulfil its obligations is to delimit the subject-matter of the dispute and to indicate to the Member State asked to submit its observations the factors enabling it to prepare its defence (see, in particular, the judgment in Case C-289/94 Commission v Italy [1996] ECR I-4405, paragraph 15).
15 Although the reasoned opinion provided for in Article 169 of the Treaty must contain a coherent and detailed statement of the reasons which led the Commission to conclude that the State in question has failed to fulfil one of its obligations under the Treaty, the letter of formal notice cannot be subject to such strict requirements of precision, since it cannot, of necessity, contain anything more than an initial brief summary of the complaints.  There is therefore nothing to prevent the Commission from setting out in detail in the reasoned opinion the complaints which it has already made more generally in the letter of formal notice (see the judgment in Case C-289/94 Commission v Italy, cited above, paragraph 16).
19 In regard to that argument, it should be noted that the reasoned opinion must contain a coherent and detailed statement of the reasons which persuaded the Commission that the State concerned had failed to fulfil one of its obligations under the Treaty (see the judgment in Case C-247/89 Commission v Portugal [1991] ECR I-3659, paragraph 22).
24 It is true that, according to the settled case-law of the Court, the subject-matter of proceedings brought under Article 169 of the Treaty is circumscribed by the pre-litigation procedure provided for by that provision and that, consequently, the Commission's reasoned opinion and the application must be based on the same complaints (see the judgment in Case C-11/95 Commission v Belgium [1996] ECR I-4115, paragraph 73).
25 However, that requirement cannot be stretched so far as to mean that in every case the statement of the subject-matter of the proceedings in the reasoned opinion must be exactly the same as the form of order sought in the application if the subject-matter of the proceedings has not been extended or altered but simply limited.
33 It should be recalled that when the Commission applies to the Court for a declaration that a Member State has failed to fulfil its obligations under the Treaty, the Commission itself must adduce evidence of the alleged infringement (judgment in Case C-210/91 Commission v Greece [1992] ECR I-6735, paragraph 22).
40 However, the aim of the last sentence of the first subparagraph of Article 8(1) of the Directive is to enable the Commission to have as much information as possible on any draft technical regulation with respect to its content, scope and general context in order to enable it to exercise as effectively as possible the powers conferred on it by the Directive.
41 Only full communication of Law No 257/92 could enable the Commission to evaluate the exact scope of any technical regulations contained in that Law which, as its title indicates, concerns the cessation of the use of asbestos.