Category Archives: State aids

Cases C-132/12 P Stichting Woonpunt and C-133/12 P Stichting Woonlinie – standing – regulatory acts not entailing implementing measures – sua sponte

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Here we go again…. Two more judgments of the Court of Justice on the issue of standing and the “regulatory acts which do not entail implementing measures” business in Article 263 (4), third limb, TFEU. On this, se our previous posts here, here and here.

In its judgments of 27 February 2014 in Case C-132/12 P Stichting Woonpunt and others v Commission, unpublished, and Case C-133/12 P Stichting Woonlinie and others v Commission, unpublished, the Court of Justice did two things, one of which is really interesting.

  1. First, it held that even if the plaintiffs did not meet all the conditions required for their actions to be admissible under the amendment to Article 263 (4) TFEU made by the Lisbon Treaty which relaxed the conditions of admissibility of actions for annulment brought by natural and legal persons against acts of the EU institutions, the General Court made a mistake in law by failing to examine whether they did or not. And that is an interesting insight about how that new, relaxed rule on standing should be applied.
  2. Second  – not so exciting – it held that the actions for annulment in these cases were admissible according to the traditional test of individual and direct concern in Plaumann.

Let’s see in more detail.

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Cases C-89/08 P and C-272/12 P Commission v Ireland and Others: The EU law principles in the Eurallumina saga – Part 1

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In the following posts we are going to have a look at the saga of the Eurallumina cases, and in particular the judgments of the Court of Justice in Case C-89/08 P of 2 December 2009 and Case C-272/12 P of 10 December 2013 Commission v Ireland and Others. These judgments touch upon important principles of EU law such as legal certainty, the duty to state reasons, the ability of the EU Courts to raise pleas sua sponte, the right of the parties to be heard, the protection of legitimate expectations and the presumption of legality of EU measures as well interesting issues such as the relationship between tax harmonisation and monitoring of State aid and the separation of powers between the Council and the Commission.

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