Judgment of the Court of Justice Fifth Chamber, 12 December 2025, Nemea Bank v ECB and Others, C-181/22

• Date: 12 December 2025
• Year: 2025

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producer’ cannot refer exclusively to the person who has physically put his or her name, trade mark

or other distinguishing feature on the product. To agree otherwise would be to restrict the scope of

the conc ept of ‘producer’ to which the EU legislature chose to give a broad interpretation, and thus

compromise the protection of consumers, who must be able to choose freely to claim full

compensation for the damage suffered fro m the producer or from the person who presents him- or

herself as such. In particular, the supplier of a product ‘presents him[- or he r]self as its producer’

where the name of t hat supplier or a distinctive element thereof is the same, on the one hand, as the

name of the manufacturer and, on the other h and, as the name, trade mark or other distinguishin g

feature put on the product by the manufacturer.

Accordingly, the Court concludes that, pursuant to Article 3(1) of Directive 85/374, the supplier of a

defective product must be considered to be a ‘person who … presents him[-or her]self as … [a]

producer’ of that product whe re that supplier has not physically put his or her name, trade mark or

other distinguishing feature on that product, but the trade mark which the producer has put on tha t

product is the same, on the one hand, as the name of that supplier or a distinctive element thereof

and, on the other hand, as the name of the producer.

V. ECONOMIC AND MONETARY POLICY

1. PRUDENTIAL SUPERVISION OF CREDIT INSTITUTIONS

Judgment of the Court of Justice (Fifth Chamber), 12 December 2025, Nemea Bank v ECB

and Others, C-181/22

Link to the full text of the judgment

Appeal – Economic and monetary policy – Prudential supervision of credit institutions – Regulation (EU)

No1024/2013 – Specific supervisory tasks assigned to the European Central Bank (ECB) – Article 24 –

Decision to withdraw a credit institution’s authorisation – Administrative review procedure – Decision

repealing an earlier decision – Action for annulment – Continuing interest in bringing proceedings –

Actions for damages – Manifest inadmissibility

Hearing an appeal brought against the order of the General Court of 20 December 2021, Niemelä and

Others v ECB,

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in which it had held that there w as no longer any need to adjudicate on the

application for annulment on account of the fact that it had become devoid of purpose and the

applicants no longer had an interest in bringing proceedings, the Court of Justice sets aside the order

under appeal. In its judgment, the Court of Justice rules on the is sue of whether an interest in bringing

proceedings is retained in the context of an action against a decision of the Europe an Central Bank

(ECB) which, following an opinion of the Administrative Board of Review (‘the ABoR’) – which is

responsible for carrying out an internal administrative review of decisions taken by the ECB – has

been abrogated and replaced by another decision with identical content.

Nemea Bank plc, the appellant, is a credit institution governed by Maltese law, subject to the direct

prudential supervision of the Awtorità għas-Serv izzi Finanzjarji ta’Malta (Malta Financial Services

Authority, Malta; ‘the MFSA’), on account of its status as a less significant superv ised entity. On

25 January 2017, after consulting the national resolution authority, the MFSA submitted to the ECB a

draft decision withdrawing the authorisa tion granted to the applic ant to take up the business of a

credit institution (‘the authorisation’).

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On 13 March 2017, that draft was approved by the ECB, which

gave the appellant three days to submit its c omments, which it did on 15 March 2017. On 23 March

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Order of 20 December 2021, Niemelä and Others v ECB (T-321/17, EU :T:2021:942; ‘the order under appeal’).

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In application of Article 80 of Regulation (EU) No 468/2014 of the European Central Bank of 16 April 2014 establishin g the frame work for

cooperation with in the Single Supervisory Mechanism be tween the European Central Bank and national competent authorities and with

national designated authorities (SSM Framework Regulation) (OJ 2014 L 141, p. 1).