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Action brought on 9 June 2008 - Acron and Dorogobuzh v Council

(Case T-235/08)

Language of the case: English

Parties

Applicants: Acron OAO (Veliky Novgorod, Russia) and Dorogobuzh OAO (Verkhnedneprovsky, Russia) (represented by: P. Vander Schueren and B. Evtimov, lawyers)

Defendant: Council of the European Union

Form of order sought

Annul Council Regulation (EC) No 236/2008 of 10 March 2008 terminating the partial interim review pursuant to Article 11(3) of Regulation (EC) No 384/96 of the anti-dumping duty on imports of ammonium nitrate originating in Russia, insofar as it imposes an anti-dumping duty on the applicants and their related companies, as defined in paragraph 11 of the contested regulation;

Order the competent institutions, in light of the gravity of breaches of Community law found, to discontinue the imposition of the anti-dumping duty with respect to the applicants and their related companies, until the Community institutions have adopted the measures necessary to comply with the Court's judgment;

Order the Council to pay the costs of and occasioned by these proceedings.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The applicants, Russian producers and exporters of ammonium nitrate, seek the annulment, pursuant to Article 230 EC, of Council Regulation (EC) No 236/2008 ("the contested regulation") ¹.

In support of their application, the applicants put forward a single ground for annulment, divided into two pleas. The applicants submit that the Community institutions wrongly established the normal value for the applicants, leading to its artificial increase; hence reached an erroneous finding of dumping, thereby breaching Articles 1 and 2 of the Basic Regulation², committing a series of manifest errors of assessment and violating fundamental principles of Community law. These breaches directly led, according to the applicants, to the unwarranted termination of the partial interim review without amendment of the anti-dumping measure with respect to the applicants.

More specifically, the applicants claim, on the basis of their first plea, that the Community institutions erred in law and violated Article 2(3) and (5) of the Basic Regulation, by disregarding a major part of the applicants' costs of production as being unreliable and/or by de facto applying a non-market economy methodology for establishing the major part of the applicants normal value.

Furthermore, the applicants submit that once having decided to proceed with the gas adjustment, the Commission violated Article 2(5), second sentence and/or made manifest error of appreciation and showed a lack of reasoning, by implementing the gas adjustment on the basis of the intra-Community price of gas at Waidhaus Germany and failing to deduct from the amount of adjustment the 30% Russian export duty on Russian gas.

The applicants submit that had the dumping margin been determined correctly, in accordance with the Basic Regulation and fundamental principles of Community law, the Community institutions would have found absence of or de minimis dumping, and the anti-dumping measures could have been repealed or significantly amended with respect to the applicants and their related companies.

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¹ - Council Regulation (EC) No 236/2008 of 10 March 2008 terminating the partial interim review pursuant to Article 11(3) of Regulation (EC) No 384/96 of the anti-dumping duty on imports of ammonium nitrate originating in Russia (OJ 2008 L 75, p. 1)

² - Council Regulation (EC) No 384/96 of 22 December 1995 on protection against dumped imports from countries not members of the European Community (OJ 1996 L 56, p. 1)