The Unión de Pequeños Agricultores (UPA), representing small Spanish agricultural businesses, challenged Council Regulation 1638/98, which withdrew subsidies from olive oil producers.
35 Thus, under Article 173 of the Treaty, a regulation, as a measure of general application, cannot be challenged by natural or legal persons other than the institutions, the European Central Bank and the Member States (see, to that effect, Case 92/78 Simmenthal v Commission [1979] ECR 777, paragraph 40).
37 If that condition is not fulfilled, a natural or legal person does not, under any circumstances, have standing to bring an action for annulment of a regulation (see, in that regard, the order in CNPAAP v Council, cited above, paragraph 38).
Under that system, where natural or legal persons cannot, by reason of the conditions for admissibility laid down in the fourth paragraph of Article 173 of the Treaty, directly challenge Community measures of general application, they are able, depending on the case, either indirectly to plead the invalidity of such acts before the Community Courts under Article 184 of the Treaty or to do so before the national courts and ask them, since they have no jurisdiction themselves to declare those measures invalid (see Case 314/85 Foto-Frost v Hauptzollamt Lübeck-Ost [1987] ECR 4199, paragraph 20), to make a reference to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling on validity.
41 Thus it is for the Member States to establish a system of legal remedies and procedures which ensure respect for the right to effective judicial protection.
43 As the Advocate General has pointed out in paragraphs 50 to 53 of his Opinion, it is not acceptable to adopt an interpretation of the system of remedies, such as that favoured by the appellant, to the effect that a direct action for annulment before the Community Court will be available where it can be shown, following an examination by that Court of the particular national procedural rules, that those rules do not allow the individual to bring proceedings to contest the validity of the Community measure at issue.