Official Journal of the European Union

C 260/35

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(Case C-391/13 P)

2013/C 260/64

Language of the case: Greek

Parties

Appellant: The Hellenic Republic (represented by: I. Khalkias, Agent)

Other party to the proceedings: European Commission

Form of order sought

The appellant claims that the Court should:

—uphold the appeal;

—set aside the judgment under appeal of the General Court of the European Union as more specifically requested;

—order the European Commission to pay the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

By the first ground of appeal, in the sector of olive oil production, the Hellenic Republic submits that the judgment under appeal manifestly erred in law by reason of the misinterpretation and misapplication of the guidelines contained in the documents AGRI/VI/5330/1997, AGRI/17933/2000 and AGRI/61495/2002, then in force, since it regarded the manifest improvement of the control system in the sector of olive oil production in the 2004-2005 period, as compared with the 2003-2004 period, as repeat offending, continuing weaknesses and marked deterioration justifying an increased correction for the 2004/2005 period, although it was clearly inappropriate to increase the correction from the 10 % which was imposed for the 2003/2004 period to 15 % for the 2004/2005 period on the ground of repeat offending, given that there were numerous improvements (further updating of the Olive cultivation-GIS, improved on-the-spot checks and cross-checks which detect irregularities and impose penalties) which reinforced their control system.

By the second ground of appeal, in the sector of arable crops, it is claimed that:

1.there is an infringement of European Union law and a breach of the principle of proportionality by reason of the misinterpretation and misapplication of the non-updated guidelines in respect of flat-rate corrections of the old CAP to the new CAP since the amounts of the flat-rate corrections related to different control rules and

2.the statement of reasons in the judgment of the General Court is insufficient in so far as a comparison of the LPIS-GIS information which was taken into account for the 2007 reporting year with the information from the new and updated 2009 LPIS-GIS made it clear that the differences and deficiencies are minimal and did not exceed 2.4 % and consequently no reasons are stated to justify the 5 % correction, and further the material arguments of the Hellenic Republic on the quality of the administrative cross-checks were ignored.

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