Article 17 - Right to property
Request for a preliminary ruling from the Najvyšší súd Slovenskej republiky. Article 267 TFEU — Annulment of a judicial decision — Referral back to the court concerned — Obligation to comply with the annulment decision — Request for a preliminary ruling — Whether possible — Environment — Aarhus Convention — Directive 85/337/EEC — Directive 96/61/EC — Public participation in the decision-making process — Construction of a landfill site — Application for a permit — Trade secrets — Non-communication of a document to the public — Effect on the validity of the decision authorising the landfill site — Rectification — Assessment of the environmental impact of the project — Final opinion prior to accession of the Member State to the European Union — Application in time of Directive 85/337 — Effective legal remedy — Interim measures — Suspension of implementation — Annulment of the contested decision — Right to property — Interference.
Outcome of the case:
On those grounds, the Court (Grand Chamber) hereby rules:
1. Article 267 TFEU must be interpreted as meaning that a national court, such as the referring court, is obliged to make, of its own motion, a request for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice of the European Union even though it is ruling on a referral back to it after its first decision was set aside by the constitutional court of the Member State concerned and even though a national rule obliges it to resolve the dispute by following the legal opinion of that latter court.
2. Council Directive 96/61/EC of 24 September 1996 concerning integrated pollution prevention and control, as amended by Regulation (EC) No 166/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 January 2006, must be interpreted as meaning that it:
— requires that the public concerned have access to an urban planning decision, such as that at issue in the main proceedings, from the beginning of the authorisation procedure for the installation concerned,
— does not allow the competent national authorities to refuse the public concerned access to such a decision by relying on the protection of the confidentiality of commercial or industrial information where such confidentiality is provided for by national or European Union law to protect a legitimate economic interest, and
— does not preclude the possibility of rectifying, during the administrative procedure at second instance, an unjustified refusal to make available to the public concerned an urban planning decision, such as that at issue in the main proceedings, during the administrative procedure at first instance, provided that all options and solutions remain possible and that regularisation at that stage of the procedure still allows that public effectively to influence the outcome of the decision-making process, this being a matter for the national court to determine.
3. Article 15a of Directive 96/61, as amended by Regulation No 166/2006, must be interpreted as meaning that members of the public concerned must be able, in the context of the action provided for by that provision, to ask the court or competent independent and impartial body established by law to order interim measures such as temporarily to suspend the application of a permit, within the meaning of Article 4 of that directive, pending the final decision.
4. A decision of a national court, taken in the context of national proceedings implementing the obligations resulting from Article 15a of Directive 96/61, as amended by Regulation No 166/2006, and from Article 9(2) and (4) of the Convention on access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters, signed in Aarhus on 25 June 1998 and approved on behalf of the European Community by Council Decision 2005/370/EC of 17 February 2005, which annuls a permit granted in infringement of the provisions of that directive is not capable, in itself, of constituting an unjustified interference with the developer’s right to property enshrined in Article 17 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
111) By its fifth question, the referring court asks, in essence, whether a decision of a national court, taken in the context of national proceedings implementing the obligations resulting from Article 15a of Directive 96/61 and from Article 9(2) and (4) of the Aarhus Convention, which annuls a permit granted in infringement of the provisions of that directive, is capable of constituting an unjustified interference with the developer’s right to property enshrined in Article 17 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
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116) Consequently, the answer to the fifth question is that a decision of a national court, taken in the context of national proceedings implementing the obligations resulting from Article 15a of Directive 96/61 and from Article 9(2) and (4) of the Aarhus Convention, which annuls a permit granted in infringement of the provisions of that directive is not capable, in itself, of constituting an unjustified interference with the developer’s right to property enshrined in Article 17 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
117) Since these proceedings are, for the parties to the main proceedings, a step in the action pending before the national court, the decision on costs is a matter for that court. Costs incurred in submitting observations to the Court, other than the costs of those parties, are not recoverable.
