Order — ECLI:EU:C:2004:117
Date: 2004-02-19
Language of the case: French
Court formation: First Chamber
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Public procurement in the European Union
Concepts: Admissibility and examination of applications, forms of order sought and pleas in law
Procedure: Action for annulment;Appeal - inadmissible
Origin: Belgium

Summary of the Order 
Procedure — Period for bringing proceedings — Time-barred — Unforeseeable circum­
stances or force majeure — Appeal — Notification of the contested judgment — 
Appellant lacking an address for service in Luxembourg 
(Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 45, second para.; Rules of Procedure of the Court of 
Justice, Art. 37(6); Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, Art. 44(2)) 
I -1981 
SUMMARY — CASE C-369/03 P 
No derogation from the application of the 
Community rules on procedural time-limits 
may be made save where the circumstances 
are quite exceptional, in the sense of being 
unforeseeable or amount ing to force 
majeure, in accordance with the second 
paragraph of Article 45 of the Statute of the 
Court of Justice, since the strict application 
of those rules serves the requirements of 
legal certainty and the need to avoid any 
discrimination or arbitrary treatment in the 
administration of justice. 
In particular, if time-limits for bringing 
proceedings are to serve any purpose, the 
fact that one party takes the view that it 
does not have all the relevant information 
to assess whether or not it is appropriate to 
bring an appeal cannot by itself justify 
bringing an appeal out of time. 
In order to calculate the time-limit within 
which an appeal may be brought, where the 
applicant does not have an address for 
service in Luxembourg for the purposes of 
the proceedings before the Court of First 
Instance, proper service of the contested 
judgment, under Article 44(2) of the Rules 
of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, 
must be deemed to have been effected by 
the lodging of the registered letter at the 
post office in Luxembourg. In any event, in 
accordance with Article 37(6) of the Rules 
of Procedure of the Court of Justice, the 
date on which a copy of the signed original 
of a pleading arrives at the Registry by any 
technical means of communication avail­
able to the Court will be taken into account 
for the purposes of compliance with the 
time-limits for taking steps in proceedings 
only on condition that the signed original 
of the pleading, accompanied by the 
annexes and copies requested, is lodged at 
the Registry no later than 10 days there­
after. 
(see paras 10, 13, 16-18) 
I - 1982