BIB.ORDER
T-4/9761997B00040006.00011506115127TORDER OF 29. 9. 1997 — CASE T-4/97
D'ORAZIO AND HUBLAU v COMMISSION
In Case T-4/97,
Roberto D'Orazio and Pierre Hublau, residing in Clabecq and Tubize (Belgium) respectively, represented by Patrice Bonbled, Caroline Sokolowitch and Olivier Gemberling, of the Brussels Bar, 239/4 Rue Gatti de Gamond, Brussels,
applicants,Commission of the European Communities, represented by Gerard Rozet, Legal Adviser, acting as Agent, with an address for service in Luxembourg at the office of Carlos Gómez de la Cruz, of its Legal Service, Wagner Centre, Kirchberg,
defendant,APPLICATION for the annulment of Commission Decision 97/271 /ECSC of 18 December 1996 on financial assistance granted by the Region Wallonne to the steel undertaking Forges de Clabecq (OJ 1997 L 106, p. 30),
THE COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES (First Chamber, Extended Composition),
composed of: A. Saggio, President, A. Kalogeropoulos, V. Tiili, R. M. Moura Ramos and K. J. Pirrung, Judges,
Registrar: H. Jung,
makes the following
Order
Facts
1In June 1996 the Belgian authorities notified the Commission of financial assistance to be granted by the Région Wallonne (Region of Wallonia), through Société Wallonne de la Sidérurgie (‘SWS’), a company which it wholly owns, to the steel undertaking Forges de Clabecq. That assistance consisted, chiefly, of a capital injection of BFR 1500 million.
2Pending a Commission decision authorizing that assistance and to enable the undertaking to continue to operate, the Region Wallonne granted bridging loans (as advance payments on the capital increase), waived claims in respect of loans by SWS and rescheduled the undertaking's debts to financial institutions which were partially in public hands.
3In Decision 97/271/ECSC of 18 December 1996 on financial assistance granted by the Region Wallonne to the steel undertaking Forges de Clabecq (OJ 1997 L 106, p. 30, hereinafter ‘the decision’ or ‘the contested decision’), the Commission considered all that assistance to constitute aid prohibited by Article 4 of the ECSC Treaty and consequently required Belgium to abolish the aid and to demand that aid already paid be reimbursed.
4On 19 December 1996, the directors of Forges de Clabecq announced that the undertaking was insolvent. By judgment of the Tribunal de Commerce (Commercial Court), Nivelles, of 3 January 1997 the liquidation was formally commenced.
5The decision was notified to the Belgian authorities on 23 January 1997 and was published in the Official Journal on 24 April 1997.
Procedure and arguments of the parties
6In those circumstances, by application lodged at the Registry of the Court of First Instance on 6 January 1997, the applicants, chairmen respectively of the blue collar and white collar trade-union committees at Forges de Clabecq, brought the present proceedings, in which they claim that the Court should:
- —
suspend operation of the decision;
- —
annul the decision.
7By a document lodged at the Registry on 19 February 1997, the Commission raised a plea of inadmissibility, in which it claimed that the Court should:
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dismiss the application as inadmissible;
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order the applicants to pay the costs.
Law
8Article 114(3) of the Rules of Procedure provides for the remainder of the proceedings concerning the plea of inadmissibility to be oral, unless the Court of First Instance otherwise decides. The Court considers that in the present case there is sufficient information in the documents placed before it and there is no need to open the oral procedure.
Admissibility
Arguments of the parties
9In support of its plea of inadmissibility, the Commission explains that the applicants are neither an undertaking nor an association within the meaning of the ECSC Treaty. It recalls that, in its case-law concerning the admissibility of actions for annulment of ECSC decisions, the Court of Justice has confined itself to applying the clear provisions of Article 33 of the Treaty and has expressly refrained from extending the right to bring proceedings to other categories of person. Moreover, it points out that the EC Treaty clearly cannot apply to proceedings brought against a decision which is based exclusively on the ECSC Treaty.
10The Commission adds, furthermore, that the application for suspension of the operation of the decision is inadmissible on the ground that it was not submitted in a separate document.
11The applicants have not submitted any observations on the plea of inadmissibility. In their application, they explained that they were acting not only in their capacity as trade-union committee chairmen but also as employees of Forges de Clabecq. They claim that the contested decision obliged the directors to announce the undertaking's insolvency and that it consequently caused the loss of their jobs. The applicants conclude that in their capacity as workers and defenders of workers' rights, they are differentiated from all other persons and that the contested decision is therefore of individual concern to them.
12The applicants consider that the decision is also of direct concern to them because it leaves no margin of discretion to the Belgian authorities. They suffer the effects of the decision without it being open to the State to guarantee their right to work under the Belgian Constitution.
13According to the applicants, in its decision the Commission applied or should have applied not only the ECSC Treaty, but also the EC Treaty. In that respect, they acknowledge that they are not entitled to seek the annulment of the contested decision under the ECSC Treaty and claim that the Commission should therefore have also applied other provisions, which would have enabled them to bring the present proceedings. They conclude that, in so far as it is easier to bring an action for annulment under Article 173 of the EC Treaty than under Article 33 of the ECSC Treaty, declaring this application inadmissible would amount to a breach of the principle of equal treatment.
Findings of the Court
14Article 104(3) of the Rules of Procedure requires that an application for suspension of operation of a measure be made by a separate document, which is not the case here. That part of the application must therefore be dismissed as inadmissible (order in Case T-107/94 Kik v Council and Commission [1995] ECR II-1717, paragraph 38).
15Secondly, Article 33 of the ECSC Treaty provides an exhaustive list of the persons entitled to bring an action for annulment of a measure (Case 222/83 Commune de Differdange and Others v Commission [1984] ECR 2889, paragraph 8).
16As regards legal persons in particular, actions for annulment of a measure may be brought under that provision, under certain circumstances, by undertakings or by associations referred to in Article 48 of the ECSC Treaty. In that respect, it should be noted that the associations referred to in Article 48 of the ECSC Treaty are associations of undertakings (Joined Cases 140/82, 146/82, 211/82 and 226/82 Walzstabl-Vereinigung and Thyssen v Commission [1984] ECR 951, paragraph 18).
17It follows that the applicants have no right of action under Article 33 of the ECSC Treaty as they themselves expressly acknowledged in the application.
18Finally the Court considers that Article 173 of the EC Treaty cannot apply to the present application for the annulment of a decision adopted under the ECSC Treaty. In particular, the applicants cannot rely on the principle of equal treatment, by complaining that actions for annulment under Article 173 of the EC Treaty may be brought by a broad group of natural and legal persons, whilst actions under Article 33 of the ECSC Treaty may be brought only by two clearly denned groups of legal persons. It is clear from Article 232 of the EC Treaty that the provisions of that Treaty do not affect those of the ECSC Treaty which, consequently, retain their own scope (see Case 239/84 GerUch v Minister for Economic Affairs [1985] ECR 3507, paragraph 9 and Case 328/85 Deutsche Babcock Handel v HauptzolUmt Lübeck-Ost [1987] ECR 5136, paragraph 10).
19It follows from all the foregoing that the application must be declared inadmissible in its entirety.
Costs
20Under Article 87(2) of the Rules of Procedure the unsuccessful party is to be ordered to pay the costs if they have been applied for in the successful party's pleadings. Since the applicants have been unsuccessful and the Commission has asked for them to be ordered to pay the costs, the applicants must be ordered to bear their own costs, together with those of the Commission.
On those grounds,
THE COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE (First Chamber, Extended Composition)
hereby orders:
- 1.The application is dismissed as inadmissible.
- 2.The applicants are ordered to pay the costs.