On June 14, 2012, the General Court of the European Union annulled the European Commission's decisions of July 1, 2008, rejecting as inadmissible the requests by Stichting Natuur en Milieu and Pesticide Action Network Europe to re-examine Commission Regulation (EC) No 149/2008 of January 29, 2008, in order to add Annexes II, III and IV setting maximum residue levels for the products listed in Annex I.

By letters dated April 7 and 10, 2008, the applicants made requests to the Commission for an internal review of Regulation No 149/2008 under Article 10(1) of Regulation (EC) No 1367/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of September 6, 2006 on the application of the provisions of the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters to Community institutions and bodies (OJ 2006 L 264, p. 13). By two decisions dated July 1, 2008, the Commission rejected these requests, arguing that they could not be re-examined internally.

Ngos then brought the matter before the General Court, raising a plea of illegality of Article 10(1) of Regulation 1367/2006, read in conjunction with Article 2(1)(g) of the same regulation, within the meaning of Article 241 EC. The applicants argued in substance that Article 10(1) of Regulation No 1367/2006, by limiting the concept of "acts" in Article 9(3) of the Aarhus Convention to "administrative act[s]", which are further defined in Article 2(1)(g) of the same regulation as "measure[s] of individual scope", was contrary to that provision of the Aarhus Convention. The General Court accepted this plea in law and upheld the applicants' claim.