24.11.2012

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 366/37

(Case T-431/12)

2012/C 366/76

Language of the case: English

Parties

Applicants: Distillerie Bonollo SpA (Formigine, Italy); Industria Chimica Valenzana (ICV) SpA (Borgoricco, Italy); Distillerie Mazzari SpA (Sant'Agata sul Santerion, Italy); Caviro Distillerie Srl (Faenza, Italy); and Comercial Química Sarasa, SL (Madrid, Spain) (represented by: R. MacLean, Solicitor)

Defendant: Council of the European Union

Form of order sought

—Annul Article 1 of Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 626/2012 of 26 June 2012, imposing definitive anti-dumping duties on imports of tartaric acid originating in the People’s Republic of China (the ‘Contested Regulation’) to the extent that the anti-dumping duty rates applied to Ninghai Organic Chemical Factory and Changmao Biochemical Engineering Company Co. Ltd have been unlawfully established on the grounds of manifest errors of assessment vitiating the measure, breaches of Articles 2 and 11(9) of Council Regulation (EC) 1225/2009 (the ‘Basic Anti-Dumping Regulation’), violations of the applicants rights of defence and failure to sufficiently motivate the Contested Regulation;

—Order the continuation of the Contested Regulation in force until the Council has adopted the measures necessary to comply with the Court’s judgment in compliance with Article 264 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union;

—Order the defendant and any interveners to pay the applicants legal costs and expenses of the procedure.

Pleas in law and main arguments

In support of the action, the applicants rely on five pleas in law.

1.First plea in law, alleging that the defendant made a manifest error of assessment by changing the methodology applied to establish analogue country normal value without sufficient justification to support changed circumstances and, in doing so, infringed Article 11(9) of the Basic Anti-Dumping Regulation.

2.Second plea in law, alleging that the defendant made a manifest error of assessment by disregarding actual domestic sales prices in the analogue country and wrongly resorting to constructed values in breach of Articles 2(1), 2(2), 2(7)(a) and 2(7)(b) of the Basic Anti-Dumping Regulation.

3.Third plea in law, alleging that the defendant made a manifest error of assessment in using the US and Western European prices for benzene in place of the actual raw material costs in the country of production in breach of Article 2(3) of the Basic Anti-Dumping Regulation and so arrived at a flawed value for the normal value applied in the review.

4.Fourth plea in law, alleging that the defendant made manifest errors of assessment caused by distorting the costs of production in the constructed normal value that was reached and by using costs for raw materials that were not equivalent in breach of Article 2(3) of the Basic Anti-Dumping Regulation.

5.Fifth plea in law, alleging that the defendant and the European Commission infringed the applicants’ rights of defence by failing to provide access to the information necessary to properly understand the methodology applied towards the establishment of the normal value and also failed to provide adequate motivations for key issues relating to the calculation of the analogue country normal value and the corresponding dumping margins applied thereby vitiating the Contested Regulation.

Council Implementing Regulation (EU) No 626/2012 of 26 June 2012 amending Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 349/2012 imposing a definitive anti-dumping duty on imports of tartaric acid originating in the People’s Republic of China (OJ 2012 L182, p. 1).

Council Regulation (EC) No 1225/2009 on Protection Against Dumped Imports from Countries not Members of the European Community (OJ 2009 L343, p. 51), as amended.