Case T‑202/13

Group’Hygiène

v

European Commission

(Action for annulment — Environment — Directive 94/62/EC — Packaging and packaging waste — Directive 2013/2/EU — Rolls, tubes and cylinders around which flexible material is wound — Trade association — No direct concern — Inadmissibility)

Summary — Order of the General Court (First Chamber), 7 July 2014

Actions for annulment — Natural or legal persons — Measures of direct and individual concern to them — Whether directly concerned — Criteria — Directive 2013/2 amending the list of examples of products constituting packaging within the meaning of Directive 94/62 — Obligation on Member States to set up a system for the return, collection and recovery of waste from products designated as packaging — Action by a trade association representing the interests of manufacturers of those products — No direct concern — Inadmissibility

(Arts 263, fourth para., TFEU and 288, third para., TFEU; European Parliament and Council Directive 94/62, Arts 3, point 1, and 7, and Annex I; Commission Directive 2013/2)

An annulment action by a trade association representing the interests of its members is not admissible unless some or all of the persons represented have locus standi in their individual capacity or are able to demonstrate an individual interest in instituting proceedings.

The third paragraph of Article 288 TFEU provides that a directive is addressed to the Member States. Thus, by virtue of the fourth paragraph of Article 263 TFEU, natural persons such as the members of the applicant cannot bring an action seeking the annulment of a directive except in cases where the directive constitutes a regulatory act that concerns them directly and does not contain any implementing measures, or where the directive concerns them directly and individually.

In that regard, the condition that a natural or legal person must be directly concerned by the measure in dispute requires that measure to have a direct effect on its legal situation and to leave no discretionary power to those to whom it is addressed and who are charged with putting it into effect, and, thereby, to have a purely automatic nature deriving solely from the rules of the Union without the application of intermediate rules.

Therefore, an action by a trade association representing the interests of its members seeking the annulment of Directive 2013/2, amending Annex I to Directive 94/62 on packaging and packaging waste is inadmissible where those members do not have locus standi and the trade association has not claimed that an interest of its own is affected.

That directive, both in its form and in its substance, is a measure of general application, applicable to objectively determined situations and is aimed, in a general and abstract manner, at all economic operators engaged in activities in the field of packaging consisting in products included by the contested directive in Annex I to Directive 94/92, including rolls, tubes and cylinders around which flexible material is wound. A directive cannot, of itself, impose obligations on an individual and may therefore not be relied upon as such against an individual. It follows that a directive that obliges the Member States to consider certain products as packaging, within the meaning of Article 3(1) of Directive 94/62, is not of itself, before the adoption of the national transposition measures and independently of them, such as to affect directly the legal situation of economic operators, within the meaning of the fourth paragraph of Article 263 TFEU. More particularly, the obligation, arising from Article 7 of Directive 94/62, to set up a system for the return, collection and recovery of waste from the products designated by Directive 2013/2 to be considered as packaging is not directly applicable to the members of the applicant trade association. It requires the Member State concerned to adopt a measure making clear the manner in which it intends to give effect to the obligation in question with respect, in particular, to rolls, tubes and cylinders around which flexible material is wound.

Moreover, the Member States have a discretion as to the choice of the measures to be taken in order to attain the objectives of Directive 94/62 in relation to those products. Thus the potential effects on the legal situation of its members derive not from the obligation to attain those objectives but from the choice of the measures that the Member State decides to adopt in order to attain them.

Accordingly it is the national measures transposing Directive 2013/2, and not the directive itself, that are liable to produce legal effects on the situation of the members of the applicant trade association. Consequently, Directive 2013/2 cannot be considered as directly affecting the rights of those members or the exercise of such rights.

(see paras 19, 23, 27, 29, 33, 37-39, 43, 51)