Action brought on 2 May 2013 - United Kingdom v Commission

(Case T-245/13)

Language of the case: English

Parties

Applicant: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (represented by: D. Wyatt, QC, V. Wakefield, Barrister, and C. Murrell, agent)

Defendant: European Commission

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:

Annul Commission Decision 2013/123/EU of 26 February 2013 excluding from EU financing certain expenditure incurred by the Member States, to the extent of an entry in the Annex relating to a 5.19% extrapolated correction of expenditure incurred in Northern Ireland in Financial Year 2010 amounting to EUR 16,513,582.57 (see OJ 2013 L 67, p. 31); and

Order the Commission to pay the United Kingdom's costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

In support of the action, the applicant relies on two pleas in law.

First plea in law, alleging that the Commission committed errors of law and of fact, and failed to take into account considerations relevant to the scale of possible loss to EU funds in claim year 2009 resulting from errors in determination of eligible area in 2005 affecting the initial allocation of entitlements, and (in consequence) failed to take into account the fact that in the great majority of cases of over-payments to farmers the risk to the funds was a risk confined to approximately 22% of expenditure, being the proportion of expenditure comprising the "area element".

Second plea in law, alleging that the Commission committed errors of law and fact, in that it wrongly concluded that the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture and Rural Development ("DARD") failed to apply, properly or at all, provisions on recoveries of undue payments, penalties, and intentional non compliance, and that the Commission thus overestimated and/or failed to take into account considerations relevant to the scale of possible loss to the EU funds. In particular, the Commission:

wrongly criticised an alleged "systematic" recalculation of payment entitlements by DARD;

wrongly claimed that errors in 2005 could have material effects on the historical element of the entitlement value;

adopted the wrong method of calculation of overpayments;

adopted the wrong approach to penalties, in particular by:

adopting the wrong method of calculating penalties; and

wrongly claiming that a penalty should be imposed for each year in cases where a penalty was applicable in 2005 but not in subsequent claim years, in this case in 2009, where over-payment resulted from the same error as that penalised in 2005;

adopted the wrong approach to intentional non-compliance.

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