Joined Cases T-218/03 to T-240/03

Cathal Boyle and Others

v

Commission of the European Communities

(Fishing – Multiannual guidance programmes – Requests to increase the objectives on safety grounds – Decision 97/413/EC – Refusal of the Commission – Actions for annulment – Admissibility – Competence of the Commission)

Summary of the Judgment

1.      Actions for annulment – Natural or legal persons – Measures of direct and individual concern to them

(Art. 230, fourth para., EC; Commission Decision 2003/245)

2.      Fisheries – Common structural policy – Multiannual guidance programmes

(Council Decision 97/413, Arts 4(2) and 9; Commission Decision 2003/245)

1.      Although Decision 2003/245 on the requests received by the Commission to increase MAGP IV objectives to take into account improvements on safety, navigation at sea, hygiene, product quality and working conditions for vessels of more than 12 m in length overall was addressed to the Member States concerned, it clearly applies to a series of vessels whose names are all set out in Annex II. It must therefore be considered, in an action for annulment under the fourth paragraph of Article 230 EC, to be a series of individual decisions, each affecting the legal situation of the owners of those vessels.

The number and identity of the vessel owners in question were fixed and ascertainable even before the date of the contested decision and the Commission was in a position to know that its decision affected solely the interests and positions of those owners. The contested decision thus concerns a closed group of identified persons at the time of its adoption, whose rights the Commission intended to regulate. It follows that the factual situation thus created characterises those owners by reference to all other persons and distinguishes them individually in the same way as an addressee of the decision.

The decision is also of direct concern to the vessel owners in so far as it is the Commission, as the only authority with competence in the matter, that rules definitively on the eligibility for an increase in capacity of certain particular vessels. That effect follows solely from the Community rules, because the Commission is the only authority competent to apply Article 4(2) of Decision 97/413 concerning the objectives and detailed rules for restructuring the Community fisheries sector for the period from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2001 with a view to achieving a balance on a sustainable basis between resources and their exploitation. The national authorities have no discretion as regards their obligation to implement Decision 2003/245. They have no choice or scope for manoeuvre when allocating increased capacity for safety and must implement the decision in a purely automatic way, no other intermediate rules being applicable.

(see paras 47-49, 54, 56-57)

2.      Article 4(2) of Decision 97/413 concerning the objectives and detailed rules for restructuring the Community fisheries sector for the period from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2001 with a view to achieving a balance on a sustainable basis between resources and their exploitation imposes no limit as regards the age of a vessel eligible for an increase in capacity on safety grounds. The concept of improvements referred to in that provision does not refer to improvements to a particular vessel but to the national fleet. Likewise, it is not necessary, in order to attain the objective of that decision, namely to conserve the fishing stocks in Community waters, that new vessels be excluded from the regime established by that article.

Accordingly, the Commission exceeded its powers by adopting in Decision 2003/245 on the requests received by the Commission to increase MAGP IV objectives to take into account improvements on safety, navigation at sea, hygiene, product quality and working conditions for vessels of more than 12 m in length overall, criteria not provided for in the rules applicable in the present case.

(see paras 105, 108-110, 134)