Stichting Natuur en Milieu and Others v College voor de toelating van gewasbeschermingsmiddelen en biociden.
Date: 2010-12-16
27. It should be recalled that the Court may of its own motion, or on a proposal from the Advocate General, or at the request of the parties, order the reopening of the oral procedure in accordance with Article 61 of the Rules of Procedure if it considers that it lacks sufficient information, or that the case must be dealt with on the basis of an argument which has not been debated between the parties (see, inter alia, Case C‑42/07 Liga Portuguesa de Futebol Profissional and Bwin International   [2009] ECR I‑7633, paragraph 31 and the case-law cited).
28. On the other hand, neither the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union nor its Rules of Procedure make provision for the parties to submit observations in response to the Advocate General’s Opinion (see Liga Portuguesa de Futebol Profissional and Bwin International , paragraph 32).
32. As a matter of principle, a new rule of law applies from the entry into force of the act of which it forms part. While it does not apply to legal situations which have arisen and become definitive under the old law, it applies to their future effects, as well as to new legal situations (see, to that effect, Case C‑428/08 Monsanto Technology  [2010] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 66). It is otherwise – subject to the principle of the non-retroactivity of legal acts – only if the new rule is accompanied by special provisions which specifically lay down its conditions of temporal application.
52. Those obligations are set out in Article 4 of Directive 2003/4. That article allows Member States to provide that a request for environmental information may, except where the information relates to emissions into the environment, be refused if disclosure of the information would adversely affect the confidentiality of commercial or industrial information where such confidentiality is provided for by national or European Union law. However, the article also requires that such a ground for refusal must be interpreted in a restrictive way, taking into account the public interest served by disclosure, and that in every particular case the public interest served by disclosure must be weighed against the interest served by the refusal.
55. By its third question the referring court asks essentially whether Article 4 of Directive 2003/4 must be interpreted as meaning that the balancing exercise it prescribes between the public interest served by the disclosure of environmental information and the specific interest served by a refusal to disclose must be carried out in each individual case submitted to the competent authorities, or that it can be defined in a general measure adopted by the national legislature.
56. It is apparent from the very wording of Article 4 of Directive 2003/4 that the European Union legislature prescribed that the balancing of the interests involved was to be carried out in every particular case.
57. Neither Article 14 of Directive 91/414 nor any other provision of Directive 2003/4 suggests that the balancing of the interests involved, as prescribed in Article 4 of Directive 2003/4, could be substituted by a measure other than an examination of those interests in each individual case.
58. That does not, however, prevent the national legislature from determining, by a general provision, criteria to facilitate that comparative assessment of the interests involved, provided only that that provision does not dispense the competent authorities from actually carrying out a specific examination of each situation submitted to them in connection with a request for access to environmental information made on the basis of Directive 2003/4.