Gul Ahmed Textile Mills Ltd v Council of the European Union.
Date: 2018-10-18
37


As regards the first part of the first ground of appeal, according to the Court’s settled case-law, an action for annulment brought by a natural or legal person is admissible only in so far as that person has an interest in having the contested act annulled. Such an interest requires that the annulment of that act must be capable, in itself, of having legal consequences and that the action may therefore, through its outcome, procure an advantage to the party which brought it. The proof of such an interest, which is evaluated at the date on which the action is brought and which is an essential and fundamental prerequisite for any legal proceedings, must be adduced by the applicant (see, to that effect, judgment of 4 June 2015, Andechser Molkerei Scheitz v Commission, C‑682/13 P, not published, EU:C:2015:356, paragraphs 25 to 27 and the case-law cited).
38


That interest must, moreover, continue until the end of the proceedings and the Court hearing the case may raise of its own motion and at any stage of the proceedings the objection that a party has no interest in maintaining its application, by reason of the occurrence of a fact subsequent to the date on which the document instituting the proceedings was lodged (see, to that effect, judgments of 19 October 1995, Rendo and Others v Commission, C‑19/93 P, EU:C:1995:339, paragraph 13, and of 17 September 2015, Mory and Others v Commission, C‑33/14 P, EU:C:2015:609, paragraph 57).
45


As regards the second part of the first ground of appeal, it should be pointed out that, according to the Court’s settled case-law, 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 and must not amount in reality to no more than a request for a re-examination of the application brought before the General Court (see, to that effect, order of 17 September 1996, San Marco v Commission, C‑19/95 P, EU:C:1996:331, paragraphs 37 and 38).
54


The General Court was right to draw such a conclusion, in so far as, as the Advocate General observed in point 99 of her Opinion, the appellant failed to show, within three years of the date of notification of the customs debt, as laid down in Article 121(1)(a) of Regulation (EU) No 952/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9 October 2013 laying down the Union Customs Code (OJ 2013 L 269, p. 1), that it had applied to the customs authorities for the repayment of the sums on the basis of the act that it considered unlawful (see, to that effect, judgments of 27 September 2007, Ikea Wholesale, C‑351/04, EU:C:2007:547, paragraph 67, and of 4 February 2016, C & J Clark International and Puma, C‑659/13 and C‑34/14, EU:C:2016:74, paragraph 188 and the case-law cited).
62


It should be recalled that, according to the Court’s settled case-law, distortion of facts and evidence must be obvious from the documents on the Court’s file, without there being any need to carry out a new assessment of those matters (judgment of 2 June 2016, Photo USA Electronic Graphic v Council, C‑31/15 P, not published, EU:C:2016:390, paragraph 52 and the case-law cited).
63


Moreover, by reason of equally settled case-law, in the sphere of the common commercial policy and, most particularly, in the realm of measures to protect trade, the Union institutions enjoy a broad discretion by reason of the complexity of the economic and political situations which they have to examine. The judicial review of such discretion must therefore be limited to verifying whether the procedural rules have been complied with, whether the facts on which the contested choice is based have been accurately stated, and whether there has been a manifest error in the appraisal of those facts or a misuse of powers (see, to that effect, judgments of 7 May 1987, Nachi Fujikoshi v Council, 255/84, EU:C:1987:203, paragraph 21, and of 14 December 2017, EBMA v Giant (China), C‑61/16 P, EU:C:2017:968, paragraph 68 and the case-law cited).
64


The Court has also held that the General Court’s review of the evidence on which the EU institutions based their findings does not constitute a new assessment of the facts replacing that made by the institutions. That review does not encroach on the broad discretion of the institutions in the field of commercial policy, but is restricted to showing whether that evidence was able to support the conclusions reached by the institutions. The General Court must therefore not only establish whether the evidence put forward is factually accurate, reliable and consistent but also ascertain whether that evidence contained all the relevant information which had to be taken into account in order to assess a complex situation and whether it was capable of substantiating the conclusions reached (judgment of 14 December 2017, EBMA v Giant (China), C‑61/16 P, EU:C:2017:968, paragraph 69 and the case-law cited).