HX v Council of the European Union.
Date: 2017-11-09
18


As a preliminary point, it must be noted that it is clear from the case-law of the Court that the forms of order sought by the parties may not, in principle, be altered (see, inter alia, the judgment of 11 November 2010, Commission v Portugal, C‑543/08, EU:C:2010:669, paragraph 20 and the case-law cited). Article 86 of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court is a codification of pre-existing case-law on the admissible exceptions to the principle that the forms of order sought by the parties are unalterable. The Court’s observations, in the present appeal, therefore apply only in the context of that exceptional situation.
22


If the General Court considered that the request to modify the application submitted in that way did not comply with the form required by its Rules of Procedure, it was under an obligation, at the very least, to inform the appellant of his error and to place him in a position of being able to rectify it.
23


As the Advocate General observed, in points 33 and 34 of her Opinion, while it is perfectly in order for modification of the application to be subject to certain formal requirements, such formal requirements do not apply for their own sake but are, on the contrary, intended to ensure the adversarial nature of proceedings and the sound administration of justice.
24


In that regard, Article 86(3) and (4) of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court themselves provide that the failure to satisfy certain formalities in the presentation of requests for modifications does not necessarily render them inadmissible. The same discretion on the part of the General Court is also found in respect of the annexes to the application, since Article 78(5) of the rules provides for a possibility of regularising the annexes in accordance with directions set by the Registrar, failing which the General Court may still decide that the application is nevertheless admissible.
25


That conclusion cannot validly be called into question by the argument made by the Council based, first, on the fact that the Bulgarian language version of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court is the only one to contain the ambiguity pointed out by the applicant and, second, on the case-law of the Court according to which the need to apply and interpret EU law uniformly precludes the examination of a provision in one of the language versions in isolation, but requires, on the contrary, its interpretation in the light of all the other language versions in accordance with its author’s intention (see, to that effect, the judgments of 12 November 1969, Stauder, 29/69, EU:C:1969:57, paragraph 3; of 17 July 1997, Ferriere Nord v Commission, C‑219/95 P, EU:C:1997:375, paragraph 15, and of 15 October 2015, Grupo Itevelesa and Others, C‑168/14, EU:C:2015:685, paragraph 42).
26


To expect litigants, with regard to a provision of the Rules of Procedure of a Court of the European Union — moreover, adopted and made authentic in all the languages of the case by that jurisdiction itself under the combined provisions of Article 44 and Article 227(1) of those rules — to refer to all the language versions of those rules in order to avoid a possible divergence in the language version which is the language of the case resulting in a finding of inadmissibility would be contrary to their right to address the Courts of the European Union in the official language of their choice, which is provided for both by Article 20(2)(d) TFEU and the fourth paragraph of Article 24 TFEU and also Article 45 of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court.
27


Therefore, it was wrong in law for the General Court to reject as inadmissible HX’s request to modify the application on the sole ground that it had not been submitted in a separate written document, without having invited the latter, beforehand, to regularise the request.
30


As the Court of Justice has held in its settled case-law, both an applicant’s legal interest in bringing proceedings and the purpose of the action must exist not merely when the action is brought, but must continue to subsist until delivery of final judgment, failing which there will be no need to adjudicate. That presupposes that the action is capable, by its outcome, of procuring an advantage to the party bringing it (judgments of 19 October 1995, Rendo and Others v Commission, C‑19/93 P, EU:C:1995:339, paragraph 13; of 7 June 2007, Wunenburger v Commission, C‑362/05 P, EU:C:2007:322, paragraph 42, and of 28 May 2013, Abdulrahim v Council and Commission, C‑239/12 P, EU:C:2013:331, paragraph 61).
33


The appellant is unable, therefore, to obtain from the annulment of Decision 2015/837 extending the existence of that list any benefit going beyond that which he was able to obtain upon the annulment of Implementing Decision 2014/488 which included his name on it.