The Court was called upon, for the first time, to give judgment on the provisions relating to development cooperation contained in the new Title XVII (Articles 130u to 130y) of the EC Treaty, as inserted by the Maastricht Treaty. In its examination of the agreement concluded between the Community and the Republic of India, the Court had occasion to clarify the scope of the competence conferred on the Community by those provisions.
The Portuguese Republic applied for annulment of Council Decision 94/578/EC concerning the conclusion of the Cooperation Agreement between the European Community and the Republic of India on Partnership and Development. That decision was based on Articles 113 and 130y of the EC Treaty. It was adopted by the Council acting by qualified majority.
The Portuguese Republic expressed its disagreement as to the choice of legal basis. It maintained that, by reason of the matters concerned, some of the clauses in the agreement required the participation of all the Member States in the conclusion of the agreement. Those matters were more specifically those concerning, first, protection ofhuman rights and, second, cooperation in the fields of energy, tourism, culture, drug abuse control and intellectual property.
Article 1(1) of the Cooperation Agreement states that respect for human rights and democratic principles constitutes an essential element of the Agreement.
The Portuguese Government considered in that regard that the references to fundamental rights in various provisions of the Treaty on European Union were ‘programmatic’ and merely defined general objectives. Consequently, according to the Portuguese Government, those provisions, and in particular Article 130u, which required Community policy in the sphere of development cooperation to contribute to respect for human rights, did not confer on the Community any specific powers of action.
The Court, in its judgment, interpreted Article 130u as meaning that Community policy in the sphere of development cooperation must be adapted to the objective of respect for human rights and democratic principles. In other words, cooperation was subordinate to respect for human rights in the State cooperating with the Community. A provision such as Article 1 of the Agreement constituted an important instrument for that purpose, since it enabled the Community to exercise the right under international law to have a development cooperation agreement suspended or terminated where the non-member country had violated human rights.
According to the Portuguese Government, the provisions in the Treaty concerning development cooperation did not on their own constitute an adequate basis for the conclusion of cooperation agreements which regulated matters falling within the Member States' own competence. In this case, the same held true as regards the provisions in the Agreement relating to intellectual property and drug abuse control, as well as to cooperation in the spheres of tourism and culture, which required the participation of the Member States in the conclusion of the Agreement.
The Court held, first, that by virtue of the Treaty provisions relating to development cooperation, the Community had specific competence to conclude agreements with non-member countries in the sphere of development cooperation. Pursuit of the broad objectives referred to by the Treaty in this sphere might require the inclusion in that kind of agreement of clauses concerning various specific matters without thereby affecting the nature of the agreement, which was defined by its essential object. This presupposes that those clauses did not impose obligations which went beyond the objectives of cooperation development.
Applying that statement of principle to this case, the Court stated that the provisions of the Agreement relating to the matters at issue established the framework of cooperationand were limited to determining the areas for cooperation. By contrast, those provisions contained nothing that prescribed in concrete terms the manner in which cooperation in each specific area envisaged was to be implemented. They did not, therefore, predetermine the future allocation of spheres of competence between the Community and the Member States for carrying through that cooperation.
The Court went on to analyse the specific provisions of the Agreement concerning energy, tourism, culture, drug abuse control and intellectual property and drew the conclusion that they contained measures necessary for the pursuit of the objectives laid down by the Treaty in the sphere of development cooperation and that they were limited to establishing the framework of cooperation.
Accordingly, the Court dismissed the application made by the Portuguese Government and confirmed the validity of the legal basis of the Agreement between the Community and the Republic of India.