Action brought on 21 January 2009 - CNOP and CCG v Commission

(Case T-23/09)

Language of the case: French

Parties

Applicants: Conseil National de l'Ordre des Pharmaciens (CNOP) (Paris, France), Conseil Central de la Section G de l'Ordre National des Pharmaciens (CCG) (Paris, France) (represented by: Y.-R. Guillou, H. Speyart and T. Verstraeten, lawyers)

Defendant: Commission of the European Communities

Forms of order sought

annul the contested decision; and

order the Commission to bear its own costs and to pay those of the applicants.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The applicants seek the annulment of Commission Decision C(2008) 6494 of 29 October 2008 in which the Commission, pursuant to Article 20(4) of Regulation No 1/2003, ¹ ordered the applicants to submit to an inspection concerning their possible participation in and/or implementation of agreements or concerted practices contrary to the provisions of Articles 81 EC and/or 82 EC.

That conduct took the form of decisions aimed at preventing pharmacists and/or legal persons from gaining access to the market in bio-medical analysis services, to restrict their activities on that market, or to exclude them from that market, inter alia, by not registering pharmacists and/or legal persons wishing to offer bio-medical analysis services in the Section G List, and by not updating their registration on that list.

In support of their actions, the applicants put forward three pleas in law alleging:

breach of the principle that the decisions of the Community institutions must be addressed to entities having legal personality, as the Ordre National des Pharmaciens is also an addressee of the contested decisions although it has no legal personality;

breach of the duty to state reasons, as the Commission did not identify the entity which may constitute an undertaking or an association of undertakings, within the meaning of Article 20(4) of Regulation No 1/2003, and as it did not state the reasons justifying such a categorisation;

infringement of Article 20(4) of Regulation No 1/2003, inasmuch as neither the applicants, nor the Ordre National des Pharmaciens (i) are undertakings, since they do not carry out any economic activity, or (ii) could be categorised as associations of undertakings since they group together a body of members who do not all carry out an economic activity, and they do not satisfy the circumstantial requirements for identifying an association of undertakings, set out by the Court, in the case of professional associations responsible for public tasks.

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¹ - Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2003 of 16 December 2002 on the implementation of the rules on competition laid down in Articles 81 and 82 of the Treaty (OJ 2003 L 1, p. 1).