Rica Foods (Free Zone) NV v Commission of the European Communities.
Date: 2005-07-14
53. It must be observed that it is settled case-law of the Court that the Community institutions have been given a wide discretion in the application of Article 109 of the OCT Decision (see, to that effect, Case C-390/95 P Antillean Rice Mills and Others  v Commission  [1999] ECR I‑769, paragraph 48; Case C-110/97 Netherlands  v Council , paragraph 61, and Case C-301/97 Netherlands  v Council  [2001] ECR I‑8853, paragraph 73).
54. In those circumstances, the Community Courts must restrict themselves to considering whether the exercise of that discretion contains a manifest error or constitutes a misuse of power or whether the Community institutions clearly exceeded the bounds of their discretion (see Antillean Rice Mills , paragraph 48; Case C-110/97 Netherlands  v Council , paragraph 62, and Case C-301/97 Netherlands  v Council , paragraph 74).
55. The depth of the Court’s review must be limited in particular where, as in the present case, the Community institutions have to reconcile divergent interests and thus select options within the context of the policy choices which are their own responsibility (see, to that effect, Case C-17/98 Emesa Sugar  [2000] ECR I-675, paragraph 53).
60. First, as to the grounds of the judgment under appeal finding that imports of sugar under the EC/OCT cumulation of origin rule would increase the surplus of sugar on the Community market, it is settled case-law that the Court of Justice has no jurisdiction to establish the facts or, in principle, to examine the evidence which the Court of First Instance accepted in support of those facts. Provided that the evidence has been properly obtained and the general principles of law and the rules of procedure in relation to the burden of proof and the taking of evidence have been observed, it is for the Court of First Instance alone to assess the value which should be attached to the evidence produced to it (see, inter alia, Case C‑185/95 P Baustahlgewebe  v Commission  [1998] ECR I-8417, paragraph 24). Save where the clear sense of the evidence has been distorted, that appraisal does not therefore constitute a point of law which is subject as such to review by the Court of Justice (see, inter alia, Case C-8/95 P New Holland Ford  v Commission  [1998] ECR I-3175, paragraph 26; Joined Cases C-24/01 P and C-25/01 P Glencore and Compagnie Continentale  v Commission  [2002] ECR I‑10119, paragraph 65; and Case C-122/01 P T. Port  v Commission  [2003] ECR I-4261, paragraph 27).
78. The Court notes, as it stated in paragraph 56 of Emesa Sugar , that as early as 1997 Community production of beet sugar exceeded the quantity consumed in the Community, cane sugar was imported from the ACP States to cater for specific demand for that product, and the Community was under an obligation to import a certain quantity of sugar from non-member countries under the WTO Agreements. Moreover, the Community was also required to subsidise sugar exports by granting export refunds within the limits laid down in those agreements. In those circumstances and in the light of the increasing growth in imports of sugar originating in the OCTs since 1997, the Commission was entitled to take the view, as the Court of First Instance rightly held in paragraphs 93 to 96 of the judgment under appeal, that any additional quantity of sugar reaching the Community market, even if minimal compared with Community production, would have obliged the Community to increase the amount of the export subsidies, within the limits mentioned above, or to reduce the quotas of European producers, and that those measures, which were contrary to the objectives of the common agricultural policy, would have disturbed the common organisation of the market in sugar, the balance of which was already precarious.
83. As the Court of First Instance stated in paragraph 143 of the judgment under appeal, the principle of proportionality, which is one of the general principles of Community law, requires that measures adopted by Community institutions do not exceed the limits of what is appropriate and necessary in order to attain the legitimate objectives pursued by the legislation in question; when there is a choice between several appropriate measures recourse must be had to the least onerous, and the disadvantages caused must not be disproportionate to the aims pursued (Case C-331/88 Fedesa and Others  [1990] ECR I‑4023, paragraph 13; Joined Cases C-133/93, C-300/93 and C-362/93 Crispoltoni and Others  [1994] ECR I‑4863, paragraph 41; Antillean Rice Mills , paragraph 52; and Case C-189/01 Jippes and Others  [2001] ECR I‑5689, paragraph 81).
84. As regards judicial review of compliance with that principle, bearing in mind the wide discretionary power enjoyed by the Commission in particular in matters concerning safeguard measures, as the Court of First Instance observed in paragraph 150 of the judgment under appeal, the legality of a measure adopted in that sphere can be affected only if the measure is manifestly inappropriate in terms of the objective which the competent institution is seeking to pursue (Case C‑301/97 Netherlands  v Council , paragraph 145; Fedesa , paragraph 14; Crispoltoni , paragraph 42; and Jippes , paragraph 82).