ORDER OF THE GENERAL COURT (Sixth Chamber)
9 February 2023 (*)
(Action for annulment – Protection of personal data – Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 – Article 76(d) of the Rules of Procedure – Failure to comply with procedural requirements – Inadmissibility)
In Case T‑266/22,
Ahmad Aziz, residing in Pietà (Malta), represented by L. Cuschieri, lawyer,
applicant,
v
European Commission, represented by A. Bouchagiar and H. Kranenborg, acting as Agents,
defendant,
THE GENERAL COURT (Sixth Chamber),
composed of M.J. Costeira (Rapporteur), President, M. Kancheva and U. Öberg, Judges,
Registrar: E. Coulon,
having regard to the written part of the procedure,
makes the following
Order
1 By his action based on Article 263 TFEU, the applicant, Mr Ahmad Aziz, seeks, in essence, annulment of Commission Decision Ares(2022) 2457760 of 1 April 2022 and of Commission Decision Ares(2022) 3227480 of 26 April 2022 concerning his requests for access to his personal data and for rectification of those data.
Background to the dispute
2 By emails of 15 February and 2 and 4 April 2022, the applicant submitted requests, inter alia to the European Commission, concerning his personal data.
3 By Decision Ares(2022) 2457760 of 1 April 2022, the Commission, in response to the applicant’s email of 15 February 2022, provided him with certain information on the processing of his personal data and sent him a copy of some of that data.
4 By Decision Ares(2022) 3227480 of 26 April 2022, in response to the applicant’s emails of 2 and 4 April 2022, the Commission informed him that his personal data could not be rectified.
Forms of order sought
5 The applicant claims that the Court should:
– annul Commission Decision Ares(2022) 3227480 of 26 April 2022;
– declare an infringement of Article 50 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union;
– declare an infringement of Article 17 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2018 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 and Decision No 1247/2002/EC (OJ 2018 L 295, p. 39);
– annul Commission Decision Ares(2022) 2457760 of 1 April 2022.
6 The Commission contends that the Court should:
– dismiss the action as inadmissible;
– order the applicant to pay the costs of the proceedings.
7 In his observations on the plea of inadmissibility, the applicant contends that the plea of inadmissibility should be rejected.
Law
8 Under Article 130(1) and (7) of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court, on the application of the defendant, the Court may decide on inadmissibility or lack of competence without going to the substance of the case. It should be noted in that regard that, contrary to what the applicant claims, the plea of inadmissibility was submitted by the Commission within the time limit for lodging such a plea. It is apparent from the documents before the Court that, because of the request to put the application in order, the application was served on the Commission on 3 August 2022, and that the Commission raised the plea of inadmissibility by separate document lodged at the Court Registry on 10 October 2022. The plea of inadmissibility was therefore lodged at the Court Registry within the period of two months prescribed by Article 81(1) of the Rules of Procedure, extended on account of distance by virtue of Article 60 of those rules.
9 In the present case, since the Commission has therefore legitimately applied for a decision on inadmissibility, the Court, considering that it has sufficient information from the documents in the file, has decided to rule on that application without taking further steps in the proceedings.
10 The Commission pleads that the present action is inadmissible on account, in essence, of the application’s non-compliance with Article 21 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union and Article 76(d) of the Rules of Procedure, in that the application does not indicate coherently and intelligibly the essential points of fact and law on which it is based.
11 The applicant submits, in essence, that the pleas in law and the facts are clearly set out in the application.
12 It should be borne in mind that it follows from Article 21 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union, which applies to the General Court by virtue of Article 53 of that statute, and from Article 76(d) of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court, that the application initiating proceedings must state the subject matter of the proceedings, the pleas in law and arguments relied on and a summary of the pleas in law, and that those elements must be sufficiently clear and precise to enable the defendant to prepare its defence and the Court to rule on the action. It is therefore necessary for the essential points of fact and of law on which an action is based to be indicated coherently and intelligibly in the application itself and for the form of order sought in that application to be set out unambiguously so that the EU Courts do not rule ultra petita or indeed fail to rule on a plea in law (see, to that effect, judgment of 16 September 2020 BP v FRA, C‑669/19 P, not published, EU:C:2020:713, paragraph 14 and the case-law cited). The application must, accordingly, specify the nature of the grounds on which it is based, with the result that a mere abstract statement of the grounds does not satisfy the requirements of the Rules of Procedure. Similar requirements are called for where a submission is made in support of a plea in law (see judgment of 25 March 2015, Belgium v Commission, T‑538/11, EU:T:2015:188, paragraph 131 and the case-law cited; order of 27 November 2020, PL v Commission, T‑728/19, not published, EU:T:2020:575, paragraph 64).
13 It follows that the applicant is required to set out in a sufficiently systematic manner the arguments relating to each plea which he or she puts forward, and the Court cannot be obliged, due to a lack of structure in the application or lack of rigour on the part of the applicant, to reconstruct the legal structure intended to support a plea by bringing together various diffuse elements of the application, at the risk of reconstructing that plea by giving it a scope which it did not have in the mind of that party. To decide otherwise would be contrary to the principle of the sound administration of justice, to the principle that the subject matter of an action is delimited by the parties, and to the defendant’s rights of defence (judgment of 2 April 2019, Fleig v EEAS, T‑492/17, EU:T:2019:211, paragraph 44 (not published)).
14 Thus, where the application initiating proceedings does not satisfy the requirements laid down in Article 76(d) of the Rules of Procedure relating to the statement of pleas, the Court is justified in declaring the action inadmissible in its entirety (see, to that effect, order of 30 September 2021, González Calvet v SRB, C‑27/21 P, not published, EU:C:2021:789, paragraphs 23 to 28).
15 In the present case, it must be stated that the application does not set out any legal plea in a sufficiently clear, intelligible and coherent manner in support of the form of order sought and, therefore, does not enable the defendant to prepare its defence and the Court to rule on the action.
16 In paragraphs 23 to 38 of the application, the applicant merely mentions that he relies on three pleas in law in support of the action, alleging (i) infringement of Article 18 of Regulation 2018/1725, (ii) infringement of Article 17 of that regulation and (iii) infringement of the principle of transparency and of the ‘presumption of disclosure’.
17 However, as is apparent from paragraphs 23 to 38 of the application, the latter does not state the legal structure which is supposed to support each of those pleas or contain a sufficiently clear, intelligible and coherent development of the points of fact and law which should support the alleged infringements.
18 Consequently, in accordance with the case-law cited in paragraphs 12 and 13 above, it must be held that the application does not satisfy the minimum requirements laid down in Article 76(d) of the Rules of Procedure.
19 The action must therefore be dismissed as inadmissible, without it being necessary to examine the admissibility of the heads of claim in the application or that of the document lodged by the applicant at the Court Registry on 4 October 2022 concerning an offer of evidence and a new plea in law.
Costs
20 Under Article 134(1) 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 applicant has been unsuccessful, he must be ordered to pay the costs, in accordance with the form of order sought by the Commission.
On those grounds,
THE GENERAL COURT (Sixth Chamber)
hereby orders:
1. The action is dismissed as inadmissible.
2. Mr Ahmad Aziz shall bear his own costs and pay those of the European Commission.
Luxembourg, 9 February 2023.