Laboratoires pharmaceutiques Bergaderm SA and Jean-Jacques Goupil v Commission of the European Communities.
Date: 2000-07-04
34 As regards the objection of inadmissibility raised by the Commission and the French Government, it follows from Article 168a of the EC Treaty (now Article 225 EC), the first paragraph of Article 51 of the EC Statute of the Court of Justice and Article 112(1)(c) of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice that an appeal must indicate precisely the contested elements of the judgment which the appellant seeks to have set aside, and also the legal arguments specifically advanced in support of the appeal (Case C-7/95 P Deere v Commission [1998] ECR I-3111, paragraphs 34 to 35; order of 16 December 1999 in Case C-170/99 P Clauni and Others v Commission, not reported in the ECR, paragraph 15).
35 That requirement is not satisfied by an appeal which, without even including an argument specifically identifying the error of law allegedly vitiating the contested judgment, confines itself to reproducing the pleas in law and arguments previously submitted to the Court of First Instance. Such an appeal amounts in reality to no more than a request for re-examination of the application submitted to the Court of First Instance, which the Court of Justice does not have jurisdiction to undertake.
40 The system of rules which the Court has worked out with regard to that provision takes into account, inter alia, the complexity of the situations to be regulated, difficulties in the application or interpretation of the texts and, more particularly, the margin of discretion available to the author of the act in question (Joined Cases C-46/93 and C-48/93 Brasserie du Pêcheur and Factortame [1996] ECR I-1029, paragraph 43).
41 The Court has stated that the conditions under which the State may incur liability for damage caused to individuals by a breach of Community law cannot, in the absence of particular justification, differ from those governing the liability of the Community in like circumstances. The protection of the rights which individuals derive from Community law cannot vary depending on whether a national authority or a Community authority is responsible for the damage (Brasserie du Pêcheur and Factortame, paragraph 42).
42 As regards Member State liability for damage caused to individuals, the Court has held that Community law confers a right to reparation where three conditions are met: the rule of law infringed must be intended to confer rights on individuals; the breach must be sufficiently serious; and there must be a direct causal link between the breach of the obligation resting on the State and the damage sustained by the injured parties (Brasserie du Pêcheur and Factortame, paragraph 51).
43 As to the second condition, as regards both Community liability under Article 215 of the Treaty and Member State liability for breaches of Community law, the decisive test for finding that a breach of Community law is sufficiently serious is whether the Member State or the Community institution concerned manifestly and gravely disregarded the limits on its discretion (Brasserie du Pêcheur and Factortame, paragraph 55; and Joined Cases C-178/94, C-179/94, C-188/94, C-189/94 and C-190/94 Dillenkofer and Others v Germany [1996] ECR I-4845, paragraph 25).
44 Where the Member State or the institution in question has only considerably reduced, or even no, discretion, the mere infringement of Community law may be sufficient to establish the existence of a sufficiently serious breach (see, to that effect, Case C-5/94 Hedley Lomas [1996] ECR I-2553, paragraph 28).
46 In that regard, the Court finds that the general or individual nature of a measure taken by an institution is not a decisive criterion for identifying the limits of the discretion enjoyed by the institution in question.
49 Article 168a of the Treaty and Article 51 of the EC Statute of the Court of Justice state that an appeal is to be limited to points of law and, therefore, the Court of First Instance has exclusive jurisdiction, first, to establish the facts except where the substantive inaccuracy of its findings is apparent from the documents submitted to it and, second, to assess those facts (Case C-7/95 P Deere v Commission [1998] ECR I-3111, paragraphs 18 and 21).
65 As regards the second limb of this ground of appeal and the Commission's alleged obligation to submit a proposal to the Council where no opinion has been delivered, the Court has held, in relation to a legislative procedure analogous to that laid down in the Cosmetics Directive, that where the measures proposed by the Commission are not in conformity with the opinion of the Adaptation Committee, or where no opinion is delivered, the Commission is not obliged to submit the same measures, without amendment, to the Council (Case C-151/98 P Pharos v Commission [1999] ECR I-8157, paragraph 23).
66 It follows that the Court of First Instance was right to hold, in paragraphs 54 and 55 of the contested judgment, that in delicate and controversial cases the Commission had to have a sufficiently broad discretion and enough time and that it was therefore entitled to withdraw its proposal for measures even after the Adaptation Committee had met.