Opinion of the Advocate General — ECLI:EU:C:2002:55
Date: 2002-01-24
Based on: Merger Treaty (1965)
Subject matter: Staff regulations and employment conditions - EC
Procedure: Appeal - unfounded;Staff cases

Summary of the Judgment 
1. Appeals — Pleas in law — Review by the Court of justice of the assessment of 
evidence — Excluded unless the sense of evidence has been distorted — Inadmissible 
(Art. 225 EC; EC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51) 
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SUMMARY — CASE C-62/01 P 
2. Officials — Actions — Prior administrative complaint — Requirement that subject-
matter and grounds be the same — Pleas in law and arguments not appearing in the 
complaint, but closely linked to it — Admissible 
(Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91) 
3. Officials — Actions — Prior administrative complaint — Fresh claim for compen­
sation distinct from that claimed in complaint — Inadmissible 
(Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91) 
1. As regards a claim for compensation 
for damage, it is for the Court of First 
Instance alone, by virtue of Article 225 
EC and Article 51 of the Statute of the 
Court of Justice, to assess the existence 
of the damage and the causal link 
between that damage and the facts 
giving rise to it, save where the clear 
sense of the evidence has been dis­
torted. When the Court of First 
Instance has made use, without distort­
ing it, of all the available evidence, 
evidence that is moreover consistent, 
the part of the ground of appeal 
requesting the Court to substitute its 
own assessment of the evidence for that 
of the Court of First Instance must be 
declared inadmissible under those 
provisions. 
(see para. 24) 
2. In actions brought by officials, 
although the relief sought in the appli­
cation to the Court must be the same as 
that set out in the complaint, and 
although the application may only 
contain heads of claim based on the 
same legal basis as that relied on in the 
complaint, those heads of claim may, 
in the non-contentious stage of the 
procedure, be developed by the sub­
mission of pleas and arguments not 
necessarily appearing in the complaint 
but which are closely linked to it. 
(see para. 34) 
3. The substance of the complaint is not 
intended to be strictly and definitively 
binding for the purposes of the con­
tentious stage of the procedure, pro­
vided always that neither the legal basis 
nor the subject-matter of the complaint 
is changed in the action brought. Thus, 
where the applicant asks in his com­
plaint for the annulment of the implied 
decision rejecting his request for assist­
ance, he must be regarded as having 
asked for compensation for the damage 
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CAMPOGRANDE v COMMISSION 
which may have been caused to him by 
that decision. On the other hand, when 
he brings a new claim for compen­
sation based on a new head of damage 
arising from measures of reprisal taken 
against him following the lodging of 
his complaint, and those reprisals are 
not the result of the Commission's 
implied decision rejecting his request 
for assistance, it is a claim for com­
pensation different from that contained 
in the complaint, and must be regarded 
as a new claim which, as such, is 
inadmissible. 
(see paras 35, 37-38) 
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