Judgment_paragraph 34 · République de Finlande v Commission of the European Communities (C-170/00)

34It must be held that the Commission is bound, in its relations with the Member States, to respect the conditions it has imposed on itself by implementing regulations. However, the Member States cannot, in their relations with the Commission, adopt purely formalist positions, when it is clear from the circumstances that their rights were fully protected. In the present case, as was pointed out at paragraph 31 of this judgment, the document of 20 May 1997 informed the Finnish Government fully about the Commission's reservations and the corrections which would probably be made to the premiums in question, so that it fulfilled the warning function conferred on a written communication by Article 5(2)(c) of Regulation No 729/70 and the first subparagraph of Article 8(1) of Regulation No 1663/95. In those circumstances, the mere omission, in that document, of a reference to Regulation No 1663/95 does not appear to be a breach of an essential formal requirement.