Judgment_paragraph 60 · Ziegler SA v European Commission (C-439/11 P)

60Thus, while measures designed to produce external effects, such as guidelines directed at economic operators, cannot be regarded as rules of law which the administration is required in all cases to comply with, they nevertheless lay down rules of conduct indicating the approach to be adopted from which the administration cannot depart, in an individual case, without giving reasons which are compatible with the principle of equal treatment. By adopting such rules and announcing by publishing them that it will apply them to the cases to which they relate, the institution in question imposes a limit on the exercise of its own discretion and cannot depart from those rules, without being found, in some circumstances, in breach of general principles of law, such as the principles of equal treatment or of the protection of legitimate expectations. It cannot therefore be precluded that, on certain conditions and depending on their content, such rules of conduct of general application may produce legal effects (see, to that effect, Joined Cases C-189/02 P, C-202/02 P, C-205/02 P to C-208/02 P and C-213/02 P Dansk Rørindustri and Others v Commission [2005] ECR I-5425, paragraphs 209 to 211).