Action brought on 16 November 2012 - United Kingdom v Commission

(Case T-503/12)

Language of the case: English

Parties

Applicant: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (represented by: D. Wyatt, QC, V. Wakefield, Barrister, and C. Murrell, agent)

Defendant: European Commission

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:

Annul Commission Decision 2012/500/EU of 6 September 2012 excluding from EU financing certain expenditure incurred by the Member States, to the extent of four entries in the Annex relating to a 5% flat rate correction of expenditure incurred in Northern Ireland in Financial Year 2008 (amounting to EUR 277,231.60 and EUR 13,671,558.90) and in Financial Year 2009 (amounting to EUR 270,398.26 and EUR 15,844,193.29) (OJ 2012 L 244, p. 11); and

Order the defendant to pay the applicant's costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

In support of the action, the applicant relies on two pleas in law.

First plea in law, alleging that the Commission committed errors of law and of fact, and failed to take into account considerations relevant to the scale of possible loss to the EU funds, in respect of the risk to such funds posed by expenditure in claim years 2007 and 2008 in particular resulting from errors in determination of eligible area in 2005 affecting the initial allocation of entitlements.

Second plea in law, alleging that the Commission committed errors of law and fact, in that the Commission wrongly concluded that Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture and Rural Development ("DARD") failed to apply, properly or at all, provisions on sanctions, recoveries of undue payments and intentional non compliance, and that the Commission thus overestimated and/or failed to take into account considerations relevant to the scale of possible loss to the EU funds. In particular, the Commission:

wrongly criticised an alleged "systematic" recalculation of payment entitlements by DARD;

wrongly claimed that errors in 2005 could have material affects on the historical element of the entitlement value;

adopted the wrong method of calculation of overpayments;

adopted the wrong approach to penalties, in particular by:    

adopting the wrong method of calculating penalties; and

wrongly claiming that a penalty should be imposed for each year in cases where a penalty was applicable in 2005 but not in subsequent claim years in this case in 2007 and 2008 where over-payment resulted from the same error as that penalised in 2005;

adopted the wrong approach to intentional non-compliance.

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