21With regard, on the other hand, to the actions brought by Mr Ripa di Meana and Mr Orlando, the Court of First Instance rejected the Parliament's argument that those actions were inadmissible on the ground that the letters of 4 February 1999 were merely a rewording of the 1995 decision which had not been contested in due time by those two Members. Taking the view, in paragraph 26 of the contested judgment, that ‘the letter of 19 November 1998 must be regarded as a request of the applicants made on their behalf by the Vice-Presidents’, the Court of First Instance held as follows in paragraphs 27 to 31 of that judgment:27. It must be borne in mind, next, that as early as its judgment in Joined Cases 16/62 and 17/62 Confédération Nationale des Producteurs de Fruits et Légumes and Others v Council [1962] ECR 471 the Court of Justice held that the term decision in the second paragraph of Article 173 of the EC Treaty (now the fourth paragraph of Article 230 EC) must be understood in the technical sense in which it is used in Article 189 of the EC Treaty (now Article 249 EC) and that the criterion for distinguishing between a legislative act and a decision within the meaning of the latter article must be sought in the general application or otherwise of the act in question.28 Moreover, it is settled case-law that the fact that the number and even the identity of the persons to whom a measure applies can be determined more or less precisely is not such as to call in question the normative nature of the measure (order of the Court of Justice in Case C-10/95 P Asocarne v Council [1995] ECR I-4149, paragraph 30 and the case-law cited).29 In the present case, it must be observed that the definitions adopted in the amendment of 13 September 1995 to Annex III, drafted in general and abstract terms, producing thereby legal effects in respect of certain Members of the Parliament in a general and abstract manner and, therefore, in respect of each of the Members, must be regarded as being of a general and normative nature. Even if it had been established that the Members to whom Article 5(2) of the amendment of 13 September 1995 applies were identifiable at the time it was adopted, the normative nature of that provision would not thereby be called into question, since it envisages objective legal or factual situations.30 Even though the Court of Justice has acknowledged that, in certain circumstances, a [normative] measure may be of direct and individual concern to certain natural or legal persons (Joined Cases T-172/98 and T-175/98 to T-177/98 Salamander and Others v Parliament and Council [2000] ECR I-2487, paragraph 30 and the case-law cited), that case-law may not be relied upon in the present case since the contested provision has not adversely affected any specific right of the applicants in the sense of that case-law.31 It follows that the arguments of the Parliament relating to the inadmissibility of the actions in Cases T-83/99 and T-84/99 must be rejected.’
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