Freistaat Sachsen (C-57/00 P) and Volkswagen AG and Volkswagen Sachsen GmbH (C-61/00 P) v Commission of the European Communities.
Date: 2003-09-30
47. The Court of First Instance is the sole judge of whether the information available to it concerning the cases before it needs to be supplemented (Case C-315/99 P  Ismeri Europa  v  Court of Auditors  [2001] ECR I-5281, paragraph 19). Moreover, since neither the appellants nor the German Government asked the Court of First Instance for measures of organisation of the procedure consisting in the production of the Saarland decision, their argument that that Court should have ordered it to be produced must be rejected.
76. According to settled case-law, the statement of reasons required by Article 190 of the Treaty must be appropriate to the act at issue and must disclose in a clear and unequivocal fashion the reasoning followed by the institution which adopted the measure in question in such a way as to enable the persons concerned to ascertain the reasons for the measure and to enable the competent Community court to exercise its power of review. The requirements to be satisfied by the statement of reasons depend on the circumstances of each case, in particular the content of the measure in question, the nature of the reasons given and the interest which the addressees of the measure, or other parties to whom it is of direct and individual concern, may have in obtaining explanations. It is not necessary for the reasoning to go into all the relevant facts and points of law, since the question whether the statement of reasons meets the requirements of Article 190 of the Treaty must be assessed with regard not only to its wording but also to its context and to all the legal rules governing the matter in question (see, in particular, Joined Cases 296/82 and 318/82  Netherlands and Leeuwarder Papierwarenfabriek  v  Commission  [1985] ECR 809, paragraph 19, and Case C-367/95 P  Commission  v  Sytraval and Brink ' s France  [1998] ECR I-1719, paragraph 63).
79. Finally, it may be seen from the contested decision that, despite the contacts between the German Government and the appellants on the one side and the Commission on the other revealing persistent differences of opinion as to whether that provision was applicable, no specific argument was put forward during the administrative procedure (see Case C-156/98  Germany  v  Commission , paragraphs 104 to 108).
93. It should be remembered that, under Article 118 of the Rules of Procedure, Article 42(2) of those rules, which prohibits generally the introduction of new pleas in law in the course of the procedure, applies to the procedure before the Court of Justice on appeal from a decision of the Court of First Instance. In an appeal, the Court ' s jurisdiction is thus confined to review of the findings on the pleas argued before the Court of First Instance (see Case C-136/92 P  Commission  v  Brazzelli Lualdi and Others  [1994] ECR I-1981, paragraph 59, and Case C-321/99 P  ARAP and Others  v  Commission  [2002] ECR I-4287, paragraph 112).
102. It must be remembered that the appraisal of the facts by the Court of First Instance does not, save where the clear sense of the evidence produced before it is distorted, constitute a question of law which is subject, as such, to review by the Court of Justice (see,  inter alia , Joined Cases C-238/99 P, C-244/99 P, C-245/99 P, C-247/99 P, C-250/99 P to C-252/99 P and C-254/99 P  Limburgse Vinyl Maatschappij and Others  v  Commission  [2002] ECR I-8375, paragraph 330).
124. In this respect, it suffices to say that, according to settled case-law, where all the other pleas put forward in an appeal have been rejected, any plea challenging the decision of the Court of First Instance on costs must be rejected as inadmissible by virtue of the second paragraph of Article 51 of the EC Statute of the Court of Justice, which provides that no appeal shall lie regarding only the amount of the costs or the party ordered to pay them (see, in particular, Case C-396/93 P  Henrichs  v  Commission  [1995] ECR I-2611, paragraphs 65 and 66, and Joined Cases C-302/99 P and C-308/99 P  Commission and France  v  TF1  [2001] ECR I-5603, paragraph 31).