Under Article 168a of the EC Treaty and the first paragraph of Article 51 of the EC Statute of the Court of Justice, an appeal may be based only on grounds relating to the infringement by the Court of First Instance of rules of law, to the exclusion of any appraisal of the facts.

Therefore, the Court of First Instance alone has jurisdiction, first, to find the facts except where a substantive inaccuracy in its findings is attributable to the documents submitted to it and, second, to assess those facts. Moreover, provided that the evidence has been properly obtained and the general principles of law and the rules of procedure in relation to the burden of proof and the taking of evidence have been observed, it is for the Court of First Instance alone to assess the value which should be attached to the evidence produced to it. That assessment does not, therefore, constitute (save where the clear sense of that evidence has been distorted) a point of law which is subject, as such, to review by the Court of Justice.