Action brought on 4 March 2010 - Spain v Commission
(Case T-106/10)
Language of the case: Spanish
Parties
Applicant: Kingdom of Spain (represented by: M. Muñoz Pérez)
Defendant: European Commission
Form of order sought
annul Decision C(2009) 10136 final of 18 December 2009 applying financial corrections to the support from the Guidance Section of the EAGGF allocated to the Community initiative CCI 2000 ES.060.0.PC.003 (Spain - Leader + Aragon), and
order the defendant to pay the costs.
Pleas in law and main arguments
Pursuant to the contested decision, the Commission applied a net financial correction of a flat rate of 2% to the expenditure declared by the Spanish authorities until 4 June 2008, which involves a reduction of the support from the Guidance Section of the EAGGF of EUR 652 674.70 with respect to expenditure for the programme mentioned below which was initially granted in accordance with Commission Decision C(2001) 2067 of 31 July 2001.
The Kingdom of Spain submits that the decision should be annulled on the basis of two grounds:
The first ground is based on an infringement owing to the incorrect application of Article 39 of Regulation (EC) No 1260/1999
1, in so far as the alleged irregularities justifying the financial correction imposed by the Commission do not in fact constitute an infringement of Article 4 of Regulation (EC) No 438/2001
2, because the obligation imposed by that provision, according to which the records relating to on-the-spot verifications must state the work done, does not necessarily require those records to contain a list of the checks made, where they may be easily ascertained.
The second ground concerns the infringement of the principle of proportionality laid down in Article 39(3) of Regulation (EC) No 1260/1999, applied in relation to the guidelines defining the principles, criteria and indicative scales to be applied by the Commission staff in order to determine the financial corrections referred to in Article 39(3) of Regulation (EC) No 1260/1999
3. First, by applying that correction of 2% of the expenditure, even though the information provided by the Spanish authorities to the Commission showed that the risk to the Fund was substantially less than that percentage. Second, by extending the period concerned by the correction, so that not only the expenditure declared until the period covered by the Commission audit (17 December 2004) was included, but also the expenditure up until the date of the bilateral meeting (4 June 2008).