Judgment_paragraph 41 · Conserve Italia Soc. coop. rl v Commission of the European Communities (T-306/00)

41The applicant also contends that that letter of 28 October 1996 does not meet the requirement to state adequate reasons either. First, it goes back four years before the contested decision was adopted and, second, it failed to establish definitively what irregularities had been found and, what is more, it is set in the broader context of the comments made by the Commission in the report, in which the Commission identified over 77 invoices that were not in order. Those circumstances do not therefore permit the conclusion to be drawn that it is only those three invoices that form the basis for the contested decision. Furthermore, the principle of stating reasons by reference to another document, accepted in Community case-law (Case T-504/93 Tiercé Ladbroke v Commission [1997] ECR II-923, paragraph 54, and Case T-65/96 Kish Glass v Commission [2000] ECR II-1885, paragraph 51), cannot be relied upon in the present case because the contested decision does not contain any reference to the letter in question.