25Under the first paragraph of Article 21 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union, which is applicable to proceedings before the General Court by virtue of the first paragraph of Article 53 of that Statute, as well as under Article 177(1)(d) of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court, all applications initiating proceedings are to include, inter alia, a summary of the pleas raised. The information given must be sufficiently clear and precise to enable the defendant to prepare his defence and the General Court to decide the case. The same considerations also apply to all claims, which must be accompanied by pleas and arguments enabling both the defendant and the Court to assess their validity. Thus, the essential elements of fact and of law on which the action is based must be indicated, at least in summary form, coherently and intelligibly in the application itself. Whilst the body of the application may be supported and supplemented on specific points by references to extracts from documents annexed thereto, a general reference to other documents cannot make up for the absence of the essential arguments in law, which must appear in the application. Similar requirements apply where a claim or an argument is relied on in support of a plea in law (see judgment of 11 April 2019, Fomanu v EUIPO — Fujifilm Imaging Germany (Representation of a butterfly), T‑323/18, not published, EU:T:2019:243, paragraph 17 and the case-law cited). Furthermore, it is not for the Court to take on the role of the parties by seeking to identify the relevant material in the documents to which they refer (see judgment of 9 March 2018, Recordati Orphan Drugs v EUIPO — Laboratorios Normon (NORMOSANG), T‑103/17, not published, EU:T:2018:126, paragraph 24 and the case-law cited).