Judgment_paragraph 49 · Commission of the European Communities v Kingdom of the Netherlands (C-34/04)

49With regard to the plea of inadmissibility raised by the Commission against that plea in defence, suffice it to note that such an objection is contrary to the general principle of respect for the rights of the defence. According to the case-law of the Court, the proper conduct of the pre-litigation procedure constitutes an essential guarantee required by the EC Treaty not only in order to protect the rights of the Member State concerned, but also to ensure that any contentious procedure will have a clearly defined dispute as its subject-matter (see the order in Case C-266/94 Commission v Spain [1995] ECR I-1975, paragraph 17). Thus, once the subject-matter has been defined, the Member State has the right to raise all the pleas available to it in order to defend itself. Moreover, there is no rule of procedure which requires the Member State concerned to put forward, during the pre-litigation procedure, all the arguments in its defence, in an application based on Article 226 EC (see Case C-414/97 Commission v Spain [1999] ECR I-5585, paragraph 19).