Order — ECLI:EU:F:2013:214
Date: 2013-12-13
Language of the case: Italian
Court formation: Third Chamber
Based on: Merger Treaty (1965)
Subject matter: Staff regulations and employment conditions - EC
Procedure: Staff cases - inadmissible;Action for damages - inadmissible

Summary Judicial proceedings — Application initiating proceedings — Formal requirements — Application lodged by fax within the time-limit for bringing proceedings — Lawyer’s hand-written signature different from that on the original application sent by post — Consequence — Date of receipt of fax not taken into account for assessing whether the time-limit for bringing proceedings has been met (Rules of Procedure of the Civil Service Tribunal, Art. 34(1) and (6); Staff Regulations, Art. 91(3)) In European Union civil service disputes, for the purposes of lodging the original of any pleading within the required time-limit, Article 34 of the Rules of Procedure of the Civil Service Tribunal, and in particular paragraphs 1 and 6 thereof, concerning the possibility of taking into account as the date on which an action is brought the date when a signed copy of the original was lodged by fax, requires the representative of the party to append a handwritten signature to the original of the pleading before sending it by fax and to lodge that original at the Registry of the Tribunal no later than ten days afterwards. In those circumstances, where it appears in retrospect that the signed original of the pleading which is lodged in hard copy at the Registry of the Tribunal within ten days of a copy being faxed does not at least bear the same signature as that appearing on the faxed document, that evidence is sufficient for it to be held that those two documents are different, even if the signatures were appended by the same person. Since it is not for the Tribunal to determine whether both texts coincide word for word, it is clear that, where the signature appended on one of the two documents is not identical to the signature appended on the other, the faxed document is not a copy of the signed original of the pleading that was lodged by post. Moreover, if the transmission of the faxed text does not meet the conditions for legal certainty imposed by Article 34 of the Rules of Procedure, the date on which the faxed document was lodged cannot be taken into account for the purposes of observance of the time-limit for bringing proceedings. (see paras 40-43) See: 13 November 2001, T‑138/01 R F v Court of Auditors, paras 8 and 9 14 November 2013, T‑283/13 P Marcuccio v Commission, para. 14 11 March 2013, F‑131/12 Marcuccio v Commission, para. 22; 28 June 2013, F‑44/11 Marcuccio v Commission, para. 37, on appeal before the General Court of the European Union, Case T‑504/13 P; 17 October 2013, F‑127/12 Marcuccio v Commission, para. 21