Brussels, 23/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - Should a Commission decision, which, according to its wording, is a addressed to a particular person, be interpreted as being binding on other undertakings which, according to the spirit and purpose of the decision, are to be treated in the same way?
That was the question put by the Administrative Appeal Court of the Land of Bavaria in case C-327/09, on which Advocate General Jääskinen delivered his opinion on 23 November.
More particularly, the German court wants to know if a Commission decision - which by its very nature, is individual - not to allow the placing on the market of a novel food under the terms of the relevant regulation (No 258/97/EC), prevents a member state's authority from investigating, as part of later administrative or legal proceedings, whether the same food had been substantially marketed by another party prior to the regulation's coming into force, the purpose of the proceedings being to establish whether the food in question fell within the scope of the said regulation.
The advocate general recommends that the Court reply in the negative. He says that, as the instrument used by the Commission was a decision, and not a regulation, national authorities have the right to investigate whether the food or food ingredient that is subject to a later request is indeed novel. However, the fact that decisions to authorise or to refuse authorisation to place products on the market remain individual poses a problem for the internal market, especially as authorisation is given separately for each novel food or novel food ingredient and for each claimant. The advocate general suggests that the Commission's proposal that all authorisations should be established by a regulation and that authorisation should be by name only in exceptional cases is helpful. (F.G./transl.rt)