EU Administrative Law Q&A

The EU Administrative Law Questions and Answers series offer the best preparation for tackling exam questions. This set of EU law notes looks at EU Administrative Law. A problem question on A (fictitious) Directive and how parties that are affected by the decision can challenge the decision-making process and how an individual may enforce rights under EU law courts through the application of these principles.

Problem Question

A (fictitious) Directive of 1 April 2010 (the Directive) which Member States were to implement by 1 April 2012 sets out an EU licensing scheme for electronic games, including video and computer games. It confers powers on the Commission to ‘blacklist’ those games which it considers, considering the opinion of its expert advisory committee, to be ‘a manifest threat to the physical and psychological health of consumers in the EU.’ On 1 July 2013, the Commission, exercising these powers and following the committee’s advice, issued a series of Decisions (the Decisions) addressed to games manufacturers to blacklist several electronic games on the ground of their ‘extreme objectification of young female adults’ which, according to the Commission, ‘runs against the EU’s commitment to promote and protect gender equality.’

Matrix Ltd, a UK manufacturer with a thriving computer games business, finds that one of the latest additions to its catalogue, ‘Housewives Unlimited’, is amongst the games blacklisted by one of the Decisions. As a result, Matrix Ltd is unable to market ‘Housewives Unlimited’ in the EU. Its director is devastated. During May 2013 the company had entered a lucrative sales contract with a retailer, Vector Ltd, committing to supply several thousand copies of ‘Housewives Unlimited’ to it by November 2013.

On 3 July 2013, a director of Vector Ltd asks you, her solicitor, for advice whether the company has standing to challenge the Decision and whether such an action, if admissible, has any chance of succeeding.

Advise the director.