Hungary v European Commission.
Date: 2014-02-13
54. According to consistent case-law any measures adopted by the institutions of the European Union, whatever their form, which are intended to have binding legal effects, are regarded as actionable measures, within the meaning of Article 263 TFEU (see, in particular, Case C‑316/91 Parliament  v Council  [1994] ECR I‑625, paragraph 8; Joined Cases C‑138/03, C‑324/03 and C‑431/03 Italy  v Commission  [2005] ECR I‑10043, paragraph 32; and Joined Cases C‑463/10 P and C‑475/10 P Deutsche Post and Germany  v Commission  [2011] ECR I‑9639, paragraph 36).
55. Those binding legal effects of a measure must be assessed in accordance with objective criteria, such as the contents of that measure (see, to this effect, inter alia Case 60/81 IBM  v Commission  [1981] ECR 2639, paragraph 9, and Case C‑57/95 France  v Commission  [1997] ECR I‑1627, paragraph 9), taking into account, as appropriate, the context in which it was adopted (see, to this effect, inter alia the Order of 13 June 1991 in Case C‑50/90 Sunzest  v Commission  [1991] ECR I‑2917, paragraph 13, and Case C‑362/08 P Internationaler Hilfsfonds  v Commission [2010] ECR I‑669, paragraph 58), and the powers of the institution which adopted the measure (see, to this effect, inter alia Case C‑301/03 Italy  v Commission  [2005] ECR I‑10217, paragraph 28).
58. It follows that the transitional system under Article 118s of Regulation No 1234/2007 was put in place in order to maintain, for reasons of legal certainty, the protection of wine names already protected before 1 August 2009 under national law, and therefore at EU level by virtue of Regulation No 1493/1999. The wording of Article 118s(1) of Regulation No 1234/2007 confirms that objective by providing that those wine names will ‘automatically be protected under this Regulation’. Therefore, the General Court, in paragraph 21 of the judgment under appeal, rightly concluded that the protection given to existing wine names was automatic.
67. In that regard, it is important to state that Hungary considers (i) the effects on labelling and on the contents of the product specification and (ii) the obligation for the Commission to take note of the new Slovak law to be the necessary consequences of the binding legal effects which should have been attributed to the entry in the E-Bacchus database. Those arguments in no way call into question the finding which the General Court made in paragraph 38 of the judgment under appeal that the entry at issue did not produce legal effects, and, in accordance with settled case-law, they are therefore ineffective (see Joined Cases C‑302/99 P and C‑308/99 P Commission and France  v TF1  [2001] ECR I‑5603, paragraphs 26 and 29, and Joined Cases C‑189/02 P, C‑202/02 P, C‑205/02 P to C‑208/02 P and C‑213/02 P Dansk Rørindustri and Others  v Commission [2005] ECR I‑5425, paragraph 148).
73. The general principle of equal treatment, which is one of the fundamental principles of EU law, requires that comparable situations must not be treated differently and that different situations must not be treated in the same way unless such treatment is objectively justified (see, inter alia, Case C‑304/01 Spain  v Commission  [2004] ECR I‑7655, paragraph 31, and judgment of 3 March 2005 in Case C‑283/02 Italy  v Commission , paragraph 79).
82. In accordance with settled case-law, complaints directed against the grounds of a decision of the General Court included purely for the sake of completeness cannot lead to the decision being set aside and are therefore nugatory ( Dansk Rørindustri and Others  v Commission , paragraph 148, and order of 23 February 2006 in Case C‑171/05 P Piau  v Commission , paragraph 86).