Union des industries de la protection des plantes v Premier ministre and Others.
Date: 2020-10-08
In that regard, it should be recalled that, according to the Court’s settled case-law, in the context of the cooperation between the Court and the national courts provided for in Article 267 TFEU, it is solely for the national court before which the dispute has been brought, and which must assume responsibility for the subsequent judicial decision, to determine, in the light of the particular circumstances of the case, both the need for a preliminary ruling in order to enable it to deliver judgment and the relevance of the questions which it submits to the Court. Consequently, where the questions submitted concern the interpretation of EU law, the Court is in principle required to give a ruling (judgment of 4 December 2018, Minister for Justice and Equality and Commissioner of An Garda Síochána, C‑378/17, EU:C:2018:979, paragraph 26 and the case-law cited).
It follows that questions relating to EU law enjoy a presumption of relevance. The Court may refuse to rule on a question referred by a national court for a preliminary ruling only where it is quite obvious that the interpretation of EU law that is sought bears no relation to the actual facts of the main action or its purpose, where the problem is hypothetical, or where the Court does not have before it the factual or legal material necessary to give a useful answer to the questions submitted to it (judgment of 4 December 2018, Minister for Justice and Equality and Commissioner of An Garda Síochána, C‑378/17, EU:C:2018:979, paragraph 27 and the case-law cited).
In the third place, as regards the failure to use the emergency procedure provided for in Directive 2015/1535 in order to communicate the national measure at issue in the main proceedings, it should be noted that the first question seeks to provide the referring court with the elements of EU law necessary to determine whether, and if so under what conditions, a communication made under that directive may be taken into account under the procedure laid down in Article 71 of Regulation No 1107/2009. The assessment of the argument of the UIPP is therefore inextricably linked to the answer to be given to that question and, consequently, cannot entail the inadmissibility of that question (see, by analogy, judgments of 17 January 2019, KPMG Baltics, C‑639/17, EU:C:2019:31, paragraph 11, and of 3 December 2019, Iccrea Banca, C‑414/18, EU:C:2019:1036, paragraph 30).
Nevertheless, although it follows from the Court’s case-law that a Member State’s power, provided by an  EU act, to adopt emergency measures requires compliance with both the substantive conditions and procedural conditions laid down by that act (see, to that effect, judgments of 8 September 2011, Monsanto and Others, C‑58/10 to C‑68/10, EU:C:2011:553, paragraph 69, and of 13 September 2017, Fidenato and Others, C‑111/16, EU:C:2017:676, paragraph 32), it is important to note that a notification to the Commission under Article 71(1) of Regulation No 1107/2009 requires only that the Member State concerned ‘officially informs’ that institution, without having to do so in a particular manner.
Furthermore, it should be noted that, under the principle of sincere cooperation enshrined in Article 4(3) TEU, the European Union and the Member States must, in full mutual respect, assist each other in carrying out tasks which arise from the Treaties. In that regard, the Court has held, inter alia, that that principle not only obliges the Member States to take all the measures necessary to guarantee the application and effectiveness of EU law but also imposes on the EU institutions mutual duties to cooperate in good faith with the Member States (judgments of 4 September 2014, Spain v Commission, C‑192/13 P, EU:C:2014:2156, paragraph 87, and of 19 December 2019, Amoena, C‑677/18, EU:C:2019:1142, paragraph 55).
It is also important to note that the principle of sound administration is included among the guarantees conferred by the EU legal order, that principle entailing the duty of the competent institution to examine carefully and impartially all the relevant aspects of the individual case  (judgment of 29 March 2012, Commission v Estonia, C‑505/09 P, EU:C:2012:179, paragraph 95 and the case-law cited).
In the present case, it is apparent from the actual wording of the first question that the referring court, which is exclusively responsible for assessing the facts in the context of the procedure laid down in Article 267 TFEU (see, to that effect, judgment of 14 May 2020, Azienda Municipale Ambiente, C‑15/19, EU:C:2020:371, paragraph 26 and the case-law cited), considers that the information referred to in paragraph 52 of the present judgment is indeed apparent from the French Republic’s communication.