27The Council considers, secondly, that the applicant failed to seek the remedies available to it in the national courts, which in the Council's view were such that they offered full and effective judicial protection (Case 281/82 Unifrex v Commission and Council [1984] ECR 1969, paragraph 11). The Council states that, unlike a regulation or a decision, a directive cannot be the direct cause of any damage since it is addressed to the Member States and it cannot in any event be a source of obligations for individuals (Case C-91/92 Faccini Dori [1994] ECR I-3325). The Council contends that the applicant should have contested the measures adopted by the French authorities to transpose the contested directives, pleading the unlawfulness of those directives and, if appropriate, seeking a ruling from the Court of Justice under Article 177 of the EC Treaty (now Article 234 EC). It would thus have been able to obtain, if appropriate, a declaration that the directives in question, together with the national measures transposing them, were invalid and thus prevent the alleged damage from occurring.
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