European Bicycle Manufacturers Association (EBMA) v Giant (China) Co. Ltd.
Date: 2017-12-14
33


In that regard, it should be noted that, according to the Court’s settled case-law, it follows from Article 256 TFEU and the first paragraph of Article 58 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union that the General Court has exclusive jurisdiction, first, to establish the facts, except where the substantive inaccuracy of its findings is apparent from the documents submitted to it, and, secondly, to assess those facts. When the General Court has established or assessed the facts, the Court of Justice has jurisdiction under Article 256 TFEU to review the legal characterisation of those facts by the General Court and the legal conclusions it has drawn from them. The Court of Justice thus has no jurisdiction to establish the facts or, in principle, to examine the evidence which the General Court accepted in support of those facts. 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 (judgment of 10 July 2008, Bertelsmann and Sony Corporation of America v Impala, C‑413/06 P, EU:C:2008:392, paragraph 29, and orders of 29 November 2012, Dimos Peramatos v Commission, C‑647/11 P, not published, EU:C:2012:764, paragraph 28, and of 9 February 2017, Syndial v Commission, C‑410/16 P, not published, EU:C:2017:112, paragraph 9).
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The basic regulation does not define the term ‘necessary information’. It follows that, in order to determine the scope of Article 18(1) of that regulation, it is necessary to take account of the wording, context and objectives of that provision (see, to that effect, judgment of 5 April 2017, Changshu City Standard Parts Factory and Ningbo Jinding Fastener v Council, C‑376/15 P and C‑377/15 P, EU:C:2017:269, paragraph 52 and the case-law cited).
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In the third place, the definition of the term ‘necessary information’ must take account of the objective of Article 18 of the basic regulation. As the Advocate General observed in point 50 of his Opinion, it is for the Commission, as the investigating authority, to establish that the product concerned has been dumped, that there has been injury and that there is a causal link between the dumped imports and the injury. However, no provision in the basic regulation confers on the Commission any power to compel the interested parties to participate in the investigation or to provide information. The Commission is therefore reliant on the voluntary cooperation of those parties in supplying the necessary information (see, by analogy, judgment of 4 September 2014, Simon, Evers & Co., C‑21/13, EU:C:2014:2154, paragraphs 31 and 32).
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It must be observed in that regard that, according to the Court’s case-law, in the sphere of the common commercial policy and, most particularly, in the realm of measures to protect trade, the EU institutions enjoy broad discretion by reason of the complexity of the economic, political and legal 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 (judgment of 16 February 2012, Council and Commission v Interpipe Niko Tube and Interpipe NTRP, C‑191/09 P and C‑200/09 P, EU:C:2012:78, paragraph 63 and the case-law cited).
69


The Court of Justice 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 of 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 26 January 2016, Maxcom v City Cycle Industries, C‑248/15 P, C‑254/15 P and C‑260/15 P, EU:C:2017:62, paragraph 89 and the case-law cited).