Case T‑640/14

Carsten René Beul

v

European Parliament
and
Council of the European Union

(Action for annulment — Functioning of financial markets — Regulation (EU) No 537/2014 — Legislative act — Applicant not individually concerned — Inadmissibility)

Summary — Order of the General Court (Ninth Chamber), 23 November 2015

1.      Actions for annulment — Natural or legal persons — Meaning of ‘regulatory act’ in Article 263, fourth paragraph, TFEU — Any act of general scope other than legislative acts

(Arts 263, fourth para., TFEU and 289(1) and (3) TFEU)

2.      Actions for annulment — Natural or legal persons — Measures of direct and individual concern to them — Individual concern — Criteria — European Parliament and Council regulation on specific requirements regarding statutory audit of public-interest entities — Action by a statutory auditor carrying on his activity in the area governed by the regulation — Not individually affected — Inadmissibility

(Art. 263, fourth para., TFEU; European Parliament and Council Regulation No 537/2014)

3.      Actions for annulment — Natural or legal persons — Measures of direct and individual concern to them — Conditions cumulative in nature — Action inadmissible where just one of those conditions not met

(Art. 263, fourth para., TFEU)

4.      Fundamental rights — Right to effective judicial protection — Review of legality of EU measures — Procedures — Protection of that right by the EU judicature or by the national courts according to the legal nature of the contested measure — Possibility of using an action for annulment or a reference for a preliminary ruling on the assessment of validity

(Arts 263, fourth para., TFEU, 267 TFEU and 277 TFEU; Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Art. 47)

1.      See the text of the decision.

(see paras 17-20)

2.      A physical or legal person is individually concerned by an act which is not addressed to that person only if that act affects them by reason of certain attributes which are peculiar to them or by reason of circumstances in which they are differentiated from all other persons and by virtue of those factors distinguishes them individually just as in the case of the person addressed by a decision.

In the case of an action for annulment of Regulation No 537/2014, on specific requirements regarding statutory audit of public-interest entities, an applicant carrying on that activity as a statutory auditor is not individually concerned either by the contested regulation in general, or by Article 21 of that regulation, and therefore does not have capacity to act under the fourth paragraph of Article 263 TFEU. The fact that the contested regulation applies to situations which are objectively determined by its own provisions and produces legal effects with respect to categories of persons envisaged generally and in the abstract shows that it is not of individual concern. The contested regulation concerns the applicant only in his capacity as a statutory auditor who carries out the activity of examining the accounts of public-interest entities, a situation which is objectively envisaged by the contested regulation, without the legislature having taken account of the individual situation of the members of that profession in any way. Furthermore, the requirements concerning the composition of the bodies responsible for the supervision of statutory auditors carrying out that activity are formulated in a general manner and apply indiscriminately to all traders and all authorities falling within the scope of the said regulation.

Secondly, the persons affected by the requirements described in Article 21 of Regulation No 537/2014 were neither identified nor identifiable when the contested regulation was adopted. Thus, an unknown number of traders can be added to the category of persons to which the applicant belonged when the contested regulation was adopted, such that that category cannot be regarded as a limited class. On the contrary, it is an indeterminate and indeterminable group of operators that is concerned, the class of which may increase in size after adoption of the contested regulation. Traders belonging to such an open category are not individually concerned by the measure at issue. Thirdly, an alleged right to be supervised by an autonomous professional body made up of members of the accountancy profession, even assuming it were established, would not individually distinguish the applicant in any way from the indeterminate and indeterminable group of traders who are practising members of that profession and who examine the accounts of public-interest entities.

(see paras 31, 39, 40, 42, 45, 46, 48, 49, 51)

3.      See the text of the decision.

(see para. 50)

4.      See the text of the decision.

(see paras 55-59)