Brussels, 09/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - In its ruling in joint cases C-92/09 and C-93/09 delivered on Tuesday 9 November, the Court of Justice of the EU, meeting in grand chamber, said that the requirement that the names of natural persons who receive agricultural aid from the EAGF and the EAFRD and the amounts received is, with regard to the objective of transparency, a disproportionate measure.
The Court thus declared invalid Articles 42(8b) and 44a of Regulation 1290/2005 on the financing of the common agricultural policy and the implementing regulation (Regulation 259/2008) on the publication of information on the beneficiaries of agricultural funds. The ruling states, however, that the invalidity of these provisions does not allow any action to be brought to challenge the effects of the publication of the lists of beneficiaries of EAGF and EAFRD aid carried out by the national authorities on the basis of those provisions during the period prior to the date on which the present judgment is delivered.
This, then, was the Court's response to a number of questions put to it for preliminary rulings by the Wiesbaden Administrative Court which was hearing an appeal against publication on the website of the German Federal Office for Agriculture and Food of the names of beneficiaries of EAGF and EAFRD aid, their places of residence or establishment and the annual amounts received.
Annual retrospective publication of this information is required by EU law but the German court felt that this amounted to unjustified interference in the fundamental right to the protection of personal data. The Court reached the same conclusion, taking the view that the rules exceed the objective of transparency in that they require publication of this information for all natural persons without drawing a distinction based on relevant criteria such as the periods during which those persons have received such aid, the frequency of such aid or the nature and amount thereof.
When asked for the Commission's reaction to the ruling and on its immediate consequences for the payment of aid, the Commission spokesman said that it was only a partial invalidation of the rules and that lawyers were already looking at the implications of the judgment. The Commission, he said, would give its response once the analysis had been completed. He pointed out that the rules are published by member states annually at the end of March, so it is only in March of next year that the rules may possibly be amended. (F.G./transl.rt)