Case T‑168/13

European Platform Against Windfarms (EPAW)

v

European Commission

(Action for annulment — Legal person governed by private law — No proof of existence in law — Article 44(5)(a) of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court — Manifest inadmissibility)

Summary — Order of the General Court (Second Chamber), 21 January 2014

Actions for annulment — Locus standi — Legal persons — Concept — Possession of legal personality in accordance with national law or recognition by the Community institutions as an independent legal entity

(Art. 263(4) TFEU; Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Art. 44(5)(a); Agreement between the European Parliament and the European Commission on the establishment of a transparency register for organisations and self-employed individuals engaged in EU policy-making and policy implementation)

The admissibility of an action for annulment brought by a body under the fourth paragraph of Article 263 TFEU depends, first and foremost, on that body’s status as a legal person.

Under Article 44(5) of the Rules of Procedure, an application made by a legal person governed by private law must be accompanied by the instrument or instruments constituting and regulating that legal person or a recent extract from the register of companies, firms or associations or any other proof of its existence in law, and proof that the authority granted to the applicant’s lawyer has been properly conferred on him by someone authorised for that purpose.

A right to bring an action under sectoral legislation, limited and specific before a single body, the judicial nature of which has moreover not been fully demonstrated, is insufficient to establish that the applicant has general legal personality its national law enabling it, in the absence of any documentary proof of its existence in law, to bring an action before the European Union Courts on the basis of the fourth paragraph of Article 263 TFEU.

Nor is proof of existence in law established by the applicant’s inclusion on the Transparency Register of the European Union established pursuant to the Agreement between the European Parliament and the European Commission on the establishment of a transparency register for organisations and self-employed individuals engaged in EU policy-making and policy implementation, since inclusion on that register is not subject to the existence of legal personality on the part of the body concerned.

Under the European Union judicial system, an applicant is a legal person if it has been treated as an independent legal entity by the EU institutions. In that respect, for the purpose of determining whether an applicant has been treated as an independent legal entity by an institution, the factors to be taken into account are, first, the representative character of the entity in question, second, its independence, necessary in order to act as a responsible body in legal matters, as ensured by its constitutional structure under its rules, and, third, the fact that an EU institution has recognised the entity in question as a negotiating body. However, the fact that the Commission has treated the applicant as an independent legal entity in the contested decision is not capable of establishing the applicant’s status as a legal person, in so far as that treatment was occasioned by the communication, by the applicant itself, of erroneous information.

(see paras 9, 10, 16, 17, 19, 23-26)