Action brought on 3 March 2010 - Nordzucker v Commission

(Case T-100/10)

Language of the case: German

Parties

Applicant: Nordzucker AG (Brunswick, Germany) (represented by: M. Niestedt, lawyer)

Defendant: European Commission

Form of order sought

Annul Commission Regulation (EC) No 1193/2009; ¹

Order the defendant to pay the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The applicant puts forward the following pleas in law in support of its action:

Lack of competence of the Commission to adopt a regulation relating to production levies for sugar marketing years 2002/2003 to 2005/2006 since the legal basis for the regulation was one that is no longer in force;

Infringement of essential procedural requirements in so far as a different procedure for the adoption of the contested regulation should have been selected, and the participation rights of the Council and of the European Parliament have thus been disregarded;

Failure to have regard to the judgment of the Court of Justice in Joined Cases C-5/06 and C-23/06 to C-36/06 Zuckerfabrik Jülich and Others [2008] ECR I-3231 in so far as, in the contested regulation, the Commission arbitrarily also changed the 'total amount of refunds' parameter in the calculation of production levies, even though this parameter was not the object of the Court's examination;

Infringement of the prohibition of retroactivity by the subsequent amendment - only introduced by Regulation No 1193/2009 - of the total amount of refunds for sugar marketing years that had already been completed.

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¹ - Commission Regulation (EC) No 1193/2009 of 3 November 2009 correcting Regulations (EC) No 1762/2003, (EC) No 1775/2004, (EC) No 1686/2005, (EC) No 164/2007 and fixing the production levies in the sugar sector for marketing years 2002/2003, 2003/2004, 2004/2005, 2005/2006 (OJ 2009 L 321, p. 1).