C-46/59

JUDGMENT OF 14.12.1962 — JOINED CASES 46 AND 47/59 MERONI v HIGH AUTHORITY

CELEX: 61959CJ0046
Datum: 1962-12-14
Källa: eur-lex.europa.eu

In Joined Cases 46 and 47/59

THE COURT composed of: A. M. Donner, President, L. Delvaux and R. Rossi (Presidents of Chambers), O. Riese (Rapporteur) and Ch. L. Hammes, Judges, Advocate-General: M. Lagrange Registrar: A. Van Houtte

gives the following

JUDGMENT

Issues of fact and of law

I — Facts

The facts may be summarized as follows:

1) By a series of general decisions, the High Authority instituted, extended and modified, pursuant to Article 53 (b) of the ECSC Treaty, obligatory financial arrangements for all undertakings consuming ferrous scrap. These arrangements were in particular intended to equalize within the Community the cost price of this raw material, whether of Community or of ‘foreign’ origin. The scheme was supported by contributions based on the consumption of bought scrap by each undertaking. These contributions were principally intended to allow for equalization payments in order to assist those undertakings which purchased ferrous scrap imported from third countries or emanating from ship-breakers' yards, as the cost price of these two categories of ferrous scrap was generally dearer than that of ferrous scrap within the Community. The above-mentioned arrangements operated from 1 April 1954 until the end of November 1958. Until 1 August 1958, important executive tasks — including, inter alia, the equalization of ferrous scrap, checking of the supporting documents presented by undertakings for this purpose and the establishment of criteria for these checks — were entrusted to the Caisse de péréquation des ferrailles importées (CPFI) (The Imported Ferrous Scrap Equalization Fund) and the Office commun des consommateurs de ferraille (OCCF) (The Joint Bureau of Ferrous Scrap Consumers) — agencies with their head offices in Brussels and regional offices in each of the Member States. From 1 August 1958 the High Authority itself once again took over the powers of decision which it had delegated to those agencies.

2) Up to 1957 approximately 22000 metric tons of ferrous scrap of Community origin were equalized, in respect of which there were presented, by way of supporting documents, certificates issued by Mr Van der Grift, the head of the Iron and Steel Department of the Dutch Ministry for Economic Affairs. These certificates fraudulently certified that the material was from ‘ship-breakers’ yards'. These irregularities gave rise to an action by the Société FERAM against the High Authority pursuant to Article 40 of the ECSC Treaty, which was dismissed by the Court on 17 December 1959 (Rec. 1958/1959, pp. 506 et seq.), as it did not consider that the above-mentioned facts indicated a wrongful act or omission on the part of the Community.

After the discovery of the Van der Grift case, it emerged that following acts of fraud and other irregularities committed independently of this case, other quantities of ferrous scrap had also been wrongly equalized. The High Authority instituted an inquiry into the matter, and in April 1961 presented, as an Annex to its ninth General Report, a Report on the action taken by it in the matter (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Report of the High Authority’). The Domestic Market Committee of the European Parliamentary Assembly also carried out a general examination of the facts in question and its rapporteur, Mr Poher, issued a Report on the matter (Working Documents 1961-1962, 15 December 1961, Document 109, hereinafter referred to as ‘the Poher Report’).

It emerges in particular from the Report of the High Authority:

that up to the time when the Report was drawn up, it had been found that 229889 metric tons out of a total of 13018270 metric tons of imported ferrous scrap or scrap treated as such had been wrongly equalized;

that as, however, the inquiries had not been completed at that date, it seemed possible, if not probable, that this figure did not include all the irregularities which had occurred (the Poher Report mentions as much as 252000 metric tons):

that the quoted figures are the result of extremely varied types of irregularity committed in several Member States:

that at the date when the Report was drawn up it was impossible to state the final outcome of the attempts made by the High Authority to recover from the guilty parties the sums paid in error, as certain of these attempts had not vet been successful.

II — Conclusions of the parties

In its application the applicant Meroni, Erba, claimed that the Court should :

1. ‘Declare that the present action is admissible; 2. Declare that the defendant is liable for having failed to avoid the situation whereby, through the medium of the OCCF during the period from 1954 to 1957, considerable quantities of ferrous scrap were sold, supported by fraudulent certificates issued by the head of the Iron and Steel Department of the Dutch Ministry for Economic Affairs, to the effect that those quantities originated from ship-breakers’ yards (in which affair Hansa-Rohstoff of Düsseldorf appears to have been involved), and on any other ground which may emerge in the course of the proceedings; 3. Order the defendant, in accordance with the provisions of Article 23 of the Protocol on the Statute of the Court of Justice, to produce all minutes and documents relating to the present dispute together with all appropriate information; 4. If necessary, appoint an expert, to be selected by the Court, to ascertain (a) The exact amount of the tonnage of ferrous scrap involved in the fraudulent practices engaged in to the detriment of the iron and steel undertakings of the Community subject to the compulsory equalization system, practices which made it possible to issue certificates in respect of certain quantities of ferrous scrap originating in the domestic market, whose sole aim was to obtain the improper benefit for those quantities of scrap of the equalization premium for imported scrap; (b) The percentage increase in the rates of equalization due to the fraud in question; (c) The exact amount of the sum which should be credited to the applicant in the provisionalequalization accounts for the years 1954 to 1957; 5. Order the High Authority to pay the costs and expenses of the proceedings.'

In its application the applicant Meroni, Milan, presents similar conclusions; it claims in particular that the Court should:

‘Declare that the defendant is liable for having failed to avoid the situation whereby, through the medium of the Dutch regional office of the Caisse de péréquation during the period from 1954 to 1957, considerable quantities of ferrous scrap were sold, supported by fraudulent certificates issued by the head of the Iron and Steel Department of the Dutch Ministry for Economic Affairs, to the effect that those quantities originated from ship-breakers' yards, and for all other acts of fraud subsequently discovered (Hansa-Rohstoff of Düsseldorf etc).’

At the hearing on 31 January 1962, the Judge-Rapporteur asked the lawyer assisting the applicants and also the applicant Compagnie des hauts fourneaux de Chasse (Case 33/59) — these three cases having been joined for the purposes of the oral procedure — whether all the applicants intended to base their action solely on the acts of fraud relating to the Van der Grift case or on all the acts of fraud committed in respect of equalization, ‘possibly amending the tenor of their conclusions to that effect, subject … to the admissibility of such amendments’.

The lawyer for the applicants replied in substance that ‘it is an established fact that the present case centres around acts of fraud committed in respect of ferrous scrap’. However he did not formally put forward any new conclusions.

The defendant, in its statement of defence, contended that the Court should:

‘dismiss all the heads of claim contained in the application of Meroni & Co., a limited partnership of Erba (Como) made on 28 September 1959’ (and also: ‘of Meroni & Co., a company limited by shares, of Settimo Torinese (Turin), made on 12 October 1959’);

order (the applicant companies) to pay the costs.

In its rejoinders the defendant declared that it maintained these conclusions.

III — Submissions and arguments of the parties set out in the written procedure

The submissions and arguments set out by the parties in the written procedure may be summarized as follows:

1. Submissions and arguments of the applicants

Where the applicants cite actual facts, these relate only to the Van der Grift case.

They maintain that the acts of fraud in question have caused them direct loss, as, for the financial years in question, they have had to contribute under the equalization scheme a greater sum than if the payments made in error had not been effected. The High Authority itself admitted that the sum paid in error amounted in total to $646 200. It appears, however, that the sum is in reality five times greater.

The applicants state that the urgency of their case compelled them to claim damages immediately, since the provisions of Article 40 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the ECSC on the period of limitation might otherwise be pleaded against them.

The alleged loss is caused by a wrongful act or omission on the part of the defendant or of the agencies in Brussels or the regional offices, which amounts to the same thing from the legal point of view.

1. By its Decisions establishing the financial arrangements for the equalization of ferrous scrap, the High Authority had explicitly guaranteed to the undertakings concerned that it would ensure that these arrangements functioned faultlessly, and thereby, that it would ensure that acts of fraud such as those in the present case were prevented. In this respect the applicants refer in particular to the eighth recital of the preamble to Decision 14/55. The High Authority has failed seriously in its duty to exercise due care. It cannot plead in its defence that the acts of fraud in question were unforeseeable, as the opposite is indicated by past experience. Furthermore, the undertakings are entitled to require that the High Authority should exhibit a higher degree of care than an ordinary administration. The acts of fraud would not have occurred if the responsible departments had exercised care: to issue in advance strict provisions on the preliminary examination of requests for equalization payments; to issue certificates indicating the origin of the ferrous scrap as ship-breakers' yards on their own responsibility instead of delegating this function to the Dutch Ministry for Economic Affairs; to require the undertaking Cracau Metalen of Vlissingen (which was implicated in the Van der Grift case) to furnish proof that the ships in question had in fact been broken up; to carry out an inspection by sampling to check that the ferrous scrap for which equalization payments were claimed wasinfactfromship-breakers' yards, and, if necessary, appointing sworn experts to carry out an inspection on the spot; to require the parties concerned to produce photocopies of the invoices of the ship-breaking undertakings together with banking documents establishing the payment of those invoices; to require the Dutch Ministry for Economic Affairs to produce photocopies of the original certificates of origin. The certificates issued by the Dutch official created the impression by the use of a false registration number that these originals existed. The negligence of the High Authority emerges moreover from the fact that it never obtained information on the steps taken by the Dutch authorities for issuing ship-breaking certificates; these only came to the notice of the High Authority in 1959 following a statement made by the Dutch Minister in the National Parliament. It is no longer possible to claim that the circumstances at the time did not give any grounds for suspicion. On the contrary, the agencies concerned must have noticed that an undertaking as small as Cracau Metalen in the course of a single year offered the Community more than 22000 metric tons of ferrous scrap from ship-breakers' yards.

2. Moreover, the High Authority and the agencies in Brussels had admitted on several occasions that a wrongful act or omission had occurred. Thus, the reply of the High Authority to written question No 59 of Deputies Van der Goes van Naters and Nederhorst (OJ, 20 April 1958, pp. 22/58 et seq.) states: that the tonnages of ferrous scrap affected by the acts of fraud ‘were sold through the medium of the OCCF’; that ‘the High Authority came to the conclusion that the system used by the Fund for checking the origin of the ferrous scrap qualifying for equalization payments must berctified, especially the liaison between the Fund and the regional offices in the countries of the Community’; that in a letter to the President of the Board of the Fund, the High Authority ‘asked for information on the steps proposed to remedy the deficiences in the functioning of the system presently in force’: that the agencies in Brussels authorized their President ‘to seek counsel's opinion on the legal measures to be taken with regard to compensation’. In a letter to Mr Bentz Van den Berg, President of the CPFI, the Vice-President of the High Authority expressly stated that the acts of fraud had been able to continue for so long because regional offices had for too long a time retained the files which they are required to submit to the Fund and because certain regional offices had failed to carry out the instructions of the Fund on the inspection of certificates of origin. The letter ends with a request to notify the High Authority of the measures which were contemplated ‘to rectify the situation which had caused the Fund to function so badly’. Far from challenging the justification of these complaints Mr Bentz Van den Berg stated in his reply that a committee was shortly to meet to work out improved measures for investigating requests for equalization. Since then, numerous regulations were in fact issued for this purpose, providingin particular for the production ofa wholeseries of supporting documents. It is incomprehensible that, despite all these factors, the defendant can continue to maintain that at the time it exercised all possible care. Moreover, even if the regional offices had submitted the documents more quickly, this would not have prevented the acts of fraud. The allegation by the defendant that the claims had to be dealt with swiftly, as it was important to the claimants to obtain the equalization payments quickly, flagrantly contradicts the statement by its Vice-President that the regional offices retained the files too long. The defendant cannot plead that it had no right to supervise the activities of national administrations. On the contrary, it is competent to exercise such a supervision and it is obliged to do so insofar as measures of this nature are shown to be necessary to prevent Community undertakings, the interests of which it is obliged to protect, from suffering injury.

2. Submissions and arguments of the defendant

The defendant cites in particular the findings in the aforementioned judgment in the FERAM case to show that the allegations of the applicants are without foundation.

It emphasized in particular that:

a) The applicants nave failed to prove any actual injury. The High Authority has taken measures to recover the equalization sums paid in error, so that it will still be possible subsequently to correct the amounts of the levy. It is unnecessary to consult an expert, since the exact amount of ferrous scrap for which equalization payments have been illegally granted is known.

b) The arguments of the applicants do not establish a wrongful act or omission on the part of the High Authority or on the part of the agencies in Brussels — which, in the opinion of the High Authority, amounts to the same thing. The wrongful act or omission of the Dutch official cannot be imputed to the High Authority. The events which led to the irregularities in question were not foreseeable, even judged by the most severe criteria as to the requisite standard of care. It is impossible to see why the swifter submission of files by the regional offices would have been capable of preventing the acts of fraud, since the falsified certificates gave every outward appearance of authenticity as far as their form is concerned. The applicants draw false conclusions from certain statements by the High Authority and from the correspondence between its Vice-President and Mr Van den Berg. In particular nothing therein can be regarded as constituting an admission of a wrongful act or omission. If in it there was a mention of improving the existing rules, it must be borne in mind that any organization can always be improved. The responsibility of the High Authority for the functioning of the equalization scheme is entirely of a political nature; there is no ‘objective’ liability on its part.

c) The fact that the responsible departments of the Community recognized the certificates issued by the Dutch Ministry as supporting documents does not constitute a delegation of its powers, but merely the recognition of documents which a national agency issued in the exercise of its constitutional powers.

IV — Subsequent procedure

1. By an Order of 26 February 1960, the Court joined the present cases to Case 33/59 for the purposes of the oral procedure.

2. By an Order of 2 June 1960, the Court authorized the three applicants to add to the file a certain number of documents, amongst which was a Report of the High Authority of 21 December 1959, the first official document in which it stated that acts of fraud other than those relating to the Van der Grift case had been committed with regard to equalization (this Report is not identical with the Report mentioned under I, 2 above).

3. At the first hearing on 31 January 1962, the three applicants made pleas in respect of all the acts of fraud so far discovered, and referred in particular to the Report of the High Authority and the Poher Report. However they did not analyse case by case the irregularities enumerated in these reports and did not reveal why, according to them, each of these irregularities demonstrated the negligence of the departments charged with checking the supporting documents. The defendant contested this enlargement of the applicants' arguments. It is observed, furthermore, that the applicants refer to the Report of the High Authority as a whole without specifying the facts which, according to them, give rise to liability on the part of the Community.

4. By an Order of 21 March 1962, the Court decided to reopen the oral procedure in the three cases, and in particular required the applicants to answer the following question: The applicants' reply was in substance that: However, they still did not go into the details of every instance of irregularity, nor did they do so at the second hearing on 28 September 1962.

‘What are the precise facts, other than those relating to the fraudulent certificates issued by the head of the Iron and Steel Department of the Ministry for Economic Affairs of the Netherlands, which, according to the applicants, give rise to the wrongful act or omission on the part of the High Authority and on which the applicants intend to base their respective applications?’

‘The precise facts (apart from those connected with the fraudulent acts committed in Holland), establishing the wrongful acts or omissions which can be imputed to the High Authority in the matter of investigating the origin of ferrous scrap, may be readily ascertained by reading certain documents lodged with the Court, in particular the Report of the High Authority and the Poher Report.’

Grounds of judgment

In the interests of the good administration of justice, the present cases, already joined for the oral procedure by the Order of 26 February 1960, should be decided as connected cases by the same judgment.

I — On the scope of the conclusions of the applicants

The scope of the conclusions made to the Court in these cases must first be settled:

In its application the applicant Meroni, Erba, claims in particular that the Court should:

‘Declare that the defendant is liable for having failed to avoid the situation whereby, through the medium of the OCCF during the period from 1954 to 1957, considerable quantities of ferrous scrap were sold, supported by fraudulent certificates issued by the head of the Iron and Steel Department of the Dutch Ministry for Economic Affairs, to the effect that those quantities originated from ship-breakers' yards (in which affair Hansa-Rohstoff of Düsseldorf appears to have been involved) and on any other ground which may emerge in the course of proceedings.’

The applicant Meroni, Milan, claimed in its application that the Court should:

In these circumstances, the question arises whether these conclusions have validly brought before the Court all the acts of fraud and irregularities committed in relation to the equalization of ferrous scrap from 1954 to 1957, or only the acts of fraud relating to the false certificates issued by the above-mention Dutch official, Mr Van der Grift (which acts of fraud are hereinafter referred to as ‘the Van der Grift affair’).

Under the terms of Article 22 of the Protocol on the Statute of the Court of Justice of the ECSC and of Article 38 (1) of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice of the European Communities, the application shall state the subject matter of the dispute and shall contain the submissions (‘conclusions’) of the applicant.

The applicant must thus set out the precise facts relied on in support of his claim and must present his conclusions in an unequivocal manner.

In the absence of such exactness, the Court risks either giving judgment ultra petita or failing to give judgment on one of the heads of the conclusions.

Furthermore, in the absence of such exactness, the right of the defendant to be obliged to reply only to facts explicitly defined and to refute only clear and precise allegations would be disregarded.

In the present case the applicants have not fulfilled these duties, although the Court invited them to do so in the course of the oral procedure and in its Order on the reopening of the oral procedure.

With regard to the facts on which they wish to base their application the applicants have limited themselves to adding to the file various Parliamentary documents and to referring in the course of the oral procedure to all the facts and arguments contained therein. They have, on the other hand, refrained from defining which irregularities described in these documents constitute a wrongful act or omission on the part of the head of the appropriate departments and which caused them injury.

If the Court accepted arguments by the applicants made with such a lack of precision, it would deprive the defendant to a considerable extent of its opportunities, provided for in the Rules of Procedure, to submit its defence with full knowledge of the facts.

With regard to the conclusions, it does not emerge clearly enough from them that they encompass not only the Van der Grift affair but also all the acts of fraud and irregularity which have been committed.

The arguments set forth in the applications are restricted in fact to the Van der Grift affair alone.

The applicant Meroni, Milan, quotes in its conclusions the tonnage of ferrous scrap sold through ‘the medium of the Dutch regional office of the Caisse de péréquation’.

In the conclusions of both applicants reference is made in parentheses to Hansa-Rohstoff, an undertaking often found mentioned in connexion with the Van der Grift affair.

It follows from the foregoing that the conclusions contained in the applications must be interpreted as referring only to the Van der Grift affair.

Subsequent procedure, far from weakening that interpretation, is such as to confirm it.

In fact, at the hearing, although counsel for the applicants asserted that the conclusions of the applicants always related to all acts of fraud, he did not however formally amend or clarify those conclusions.

Such an assertion cannot take the place of an amendment of the conclusions, which, even if admissible, is subject to the strictest requirements as regards its precision and content.

The applicants have observed that they had not been in a position to put forward the arguments in question at an earlier date. That observation, however, is not relevant since they are always free to make a fresh application.

Finally, the applicants emphasize that if they had delayed in enforcing their rights in accordance with Article 40 of the Treaty, they would have run the risk of finding themselves barred by the period of limitation provided for in Article 40 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the ECSC. That fear, however, is without foundation.

There is in fact no danger that actions based on irregularities other than those relating to the Van der Grift affair will be time-barred, as it has not yet been possible finally to fix the amounts to be paid in respect of the equalization levy on ferrous scrap.

These arguments do not however make it possible to give to the references to the acts of fraud, other than those committed in the Van der Grift affair — references contained in the conclusions and in the course of the oral procedure — the wide interpretation the benefit of which the applicants claim. Those references must rather be interpreted solely as a reservation in order that those other injurious facts might be taken into consideration, to the extent to which such facts and circumstances — which moreover are unsubstantiated — relate only to the Van der Grift affair.

It follows from the foregoing that the applicants' claim relates only to the Van der Grift affair, including the facts relating to that affair which emerged after the lodging of the applications, but before the opening of the oral procedure.

II — On the substance of the case

1. Liability of the High Authority on the basis of a guarantee given by it

The applicants infer the liability of the defendant from the fact that the latter, in its decisions establishing the equalization scheme, formally undertook to ensure a faultless service; this commitment extended also to iron and steel undertakings of the Community. This emerges from the eighth recital of the preamble to Decision 14/55 in which the High Authority declared that it ‘is responsible for the regular functioning of the financial arrangements and hence must always be in a position to intervene effectively’.

The establishment of the financial arrangements and the principle enunciated in the recital to the above-mentioned general Decision, of the liability assumed by the High Authority for the regular functioning of this scheme, belong to the political and administrative sphere, and cannot thus constitute an obligation to the undertakings under its authority or a guarantee giving rise to objective, contractual or legal liability on the part of the High Authority, even when no wrongful act or omission can be imputed to it.

The submission must therefore be dismissed.

2. Liability for a wrongful act or omission

The applications are moreover principally based on Article 40 of the ECSC Treaty which allows the injured party to bring an action to obtain pecuniary reparation from the Community to make good any injury caused in carrying out the said Treaty by a wrongful act or omission on the part of the Community in the performances of its functions.

a) The official of the Dutch Ministry for Economic Affairs, who fraudulently issued the certificates in question, was not subject to the control of the High Authority and did not receive orders from it, but acted in his capacity as a national official. If, in accordance with the system applied by the High Authority, certificates issued by the Dutch Ministry were recognized as supporting documents without further checking, it cannot be inferred from this that the official whom the Ministry had charged with issuing the said certificates acted on behalf of or in the name of the Community. The wrongful act committed by this official cannot therefore be imputed to the defendant. No other personal wrong committed by a servant of the defendant in the performance of his duties has been established.

b) It is also necessary however to consider whether there was a wrongful act or omission on the part of the defendant within the meaning of Article 40 of the ECSC Treaty, because of its failure to provide a better organized system for issuing the certificates of origin for ferrous scrap qualifying for equalization payments, and in particular because of its failure to provide for the investigation of the authenticity of the said certificates. At first sight, the fact that it was possible for the abuses complained of to continue for several years appears to indicate that the organization was defective and insufficient. However that conclusion is not justified in this case. In fact, in leaving to the competent national authority the task of issuing the necessary certificates, the defendant pursued the course which appeared the most appropriate and the most likely to afford the best guarantee against any abuse. Since the certificates formed at the same time the legal basis, according to Dutch law, for the re-export of the ferrous scrap, it was natural to entrust their issue to the national authorities who, moreover, were the best qualified to carry out the necessary checks. The issue of the certificates had not been left to a subordinate authority but to a Ministry. The Dutch regulations provided for an extremely detailed procedure prior to the issue of the certificates for checking the origin of the ferrous scrap in question; it was in fact impossible to foresee that acts of fraud could occur if this system were applied. In these circumstances, the defendant cannot be blamed for having adopted this system and the fact of its having done so cannot in any case be described as a wrongful act or omission. This also holds good with regard to lack of supervision. In fact, it would have been excessive to check certificates coming from a Ministry and purporting to be official documents, at any rate so long as there was no indication of abuse which could raise doubts as to their authenticity. The argument of the applicants that the reply given by the High Authority in the European Parliament to the questions put by Mr Van der Goes van Naters and Mr Nederhorst and the letter of 24 February 1958 addressed to the President of the Equalization Fund by the Vice-President of the High Authority, Mr Spierenburg, constituted an admission of a wrongful act or omission should be rejected. Although in fact these statements did inquire how an improvement of the system could avoid such defects in future — and it was only after the acts of fraud that those defects came to light — they do not constitute an express admission that a wrongful act or omission on the part of the High Authority had occurred. They cannot moreover transform a course of action by the defendant into a wrongful act or omission — a description which such a course of action does not in fact deserve. In its judgment in the FERAM case (Rec. 1958/1959, pp. 506 et seq.), the Court had refused a request for reparation for injury to the applicant FERAM; this request was based on the same ground as the present application, namely the existence of a wrongful act or omission on the part of the High Authority comprising its failure to provide a sufficient check on the operation of the equalization scheme. The facts referred to by the applicants in the present dispute, inasmuch as they relate to the Van der Grift affair, do not contain any new factor which might lead the Court to abandon its position as defined in the FERAM case. The action must, therefore, be dismissed as being unfounded.

III — Costs

The applicants have failed in their submissions relating to the Van der Grift affair.

They have also failed in their attempt to bring before the Court other acts of fraud discovered after the irregularities relating to the said affair.

They were, however, induced to make these attempts by the fact that they were unaware, or might have been unaware, that the Court would receive claims made after the closing of the accounts of the equalization scheme, without holding them to be outside the period of limitation.

This lack of awareness, for which the applicants cannot be blamed, induced them to institute proceedings for compensation within the time which they considered appropriate.

That factor constitutes an exceptional circumstance, within the meaning of Article 69 (3) of the Rules of the Court, for offsetting the costs as will be defined below in the operative part of the judgment.

On those grounds, Upon reading the pleadings; Upon hearing the report of the Judge-Rapporteur; Upon hearing the parties; Upon hearing the opinion of the Advocate-General; Having regard to Article 40 of the Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community; Having regard to the Protocol on the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Coal and Steel Community, in particular Articles 22 and 40; Having regard to the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice of the European Communities, in particular Articles 38 (1) and 69 (2) and (3); THE COURT hereby

1 Joins the cases entered under numbers 46/59 and 47/59 for the purposes of the present judgment by reason of their interconnexion;

2 Dismisses the applications as unfounded;

3 Orders that the costs be shared, each party bearing its own costs.