Opinion of Mr Advocate General Mancini

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. The funds allocated in the budget to finance the information campaign for the European elections have led the French ecologists to bring several actions against the Community institutions. In particular, Les Verts — Parti écologiste (hereinafter referred to as the Ecologists) have brought actions :

2. It is first of all necessary to describe the system established to finance the information campaigns for the European elections by explaining its origin and tracing its history.

3. Let us now turn our attention to the actions brought by the Ecologists. As the Court will be aware, the Parliament has the power, under Article 18 of the Financial Regulation of 21 December 1977 (Official Journal L 356, p. 1), to implement the sections of the Budget relating to it. Since it considered that by reserving only 31% of the funds for those elected in 1984 the Parliament had used that power to favour the parties already represented in the Parliament, the Ecologists brought six actions before the Court on 19 September 1983, 20 December 1983 and 7 June 1984, received at the Court Registry on 27 September 1983, 28 December 1983 and 18 July 1984 respectively.

4. I will first consider the procedural aspects of Case 294/83. The Parliament contends that the application is inadmissible because :

5. The arguments that I have just summarized do not appear to me to be well founded; moreover the latter argument is in fact extraneous to the legal problem on which the Court has been asked to rule.

6. The second line of argument put forward to contest the admissibility of the action, namely that concerning judicial review of the activity of the European Parliament, merits closer examination. This is a difficult matter, partly because it is the first time that this Court has ruled on an application brought against a decision of the Parliament on the basis of Article 173 of the EEC Treaty alone. Moreover, it should be said in the first place that the defendant has not assisted the Court in finding the correct solution, even though it did not raise a formal objection of inadmissibility.

7. I am in favour of the interpretation granting the greatest measure of protection. I am well aware that, interpreted literally, Article 173 does not provide for judicial review of the decisions of the Parliament. I none the less believe that such an interpretation would conflict with the general scheme of the Treaties and I consider that there is sufficient support in the Court's case-law and in academic works for the opposite view.

8. The third ground of inadmissibility deals with the existence of the conditions to which the second paragraph of Article 173 makes actions brought by natural or legal persons subject. As the Court will be aware, those conditions are very strict: the measure may be of a general or abstract nature but it may only be challenged if it is of direct and individual concern to the person bringing the action.

9. The Court's pronouncements on the meaning of individually convince me that in this case the condition laid down in the second paragraph of Article 173 is not met. What in fact does that word mean? The Court's reply is well known: Persons other than those to whom a decision is addressed may only claim to be individually concerned if that decision 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 these factors distinguishes them individually just as in the case of the person addressed (Plaumann judgment, cited above, judgment of 11 July 1968 in Case 6/68 Zuckerfabrik Watenstedt v Council [1968] ECR 409 and judgment of 14 July 1983 in Case 231/82 Spijker v Commission [1983] ECR 2559).

10. I am firmly convinced that the action brought by the Ecologists must be declared inadmissible. For that reason, I will deal briefly with the merits of the case, and then only out of respect for the convention that the Advocate General should consider the case in all its aspects.

11. For all the foregoing reasons, I suggest that the Court:

1 Translated from the Italian.