Judgment — ECLI:EU:F:2016:64
Date: 2016-03-17
Language of the case: English
Court formation: Second Chamber
Based on: Merger Treaty (1965)
Subject matter: Staff regulations and employment conditions - EC
Procedure: Staff cases - successful

Summary 1. Officials — Reimbursement of expenses — Installation allowance — Daily subsistence allowance — Concept of residence — Official's centre of interests (Staff Regulations, Annex VII, Arts 5 and 10; Conditions of Employment of Other Servants, Art. 22) 2. Actions brought by officials — Purpose — Directions to the administration — Unlimited jurisdiction — Claim for payment — Amounts owing in respect of the installation allowance and the daily subsistence allowance — Not calculated by the applicant — Amounts directly and objectively ascertainable — Admissibility (Staff Regulations, Art. 91(1) and Annex VII, Arts 5 and 10) 1. According to Articles 5 and 10 of Annex VII to the Staff Regulations, an official who furnishes evidence that a change in the place of residence was required in order to satisfy the requirements of Article 20 of the Staff Regulations is entitled to the installation allowance and the daily subsistence allowance. In that case, the place of habitual residence is that in which the official concerned has established and intends to maintain the permanent or habitual centre of his interests. The concept of residence, while not based on the purely quantitative element of the time spent by the person concerned in a particular country, nevertheless implies not only the actual fact of physically living in a given place, but also the intention of thereby achieving the continuity which stems from a stable way of life and from the course of normal social relations. Consequently, if an official has furnished evidence that he has been obliged to change his place of residence in order to satisfy the requirements of Article 20 of the Staff Regulations, the fact that, at the time of his recruitment, he was already at the place of his future employment does not affect the grant of the daily subsistence allowance and the installation allowance. (see paras 31, 32, 58) See: Judgment of 5 February 1987 in Mouzourakis v Parliament, 280/85, EU:C:1987:66 Judgment of 10 July 1992 in Benzler v Commission, T‑63/91, EU:T:1992:88 Judgments of 16 January 2007 in Borbély v Commission, F‑126/05, EU:F:2007:12, paras 33 and 49, and 19 March 2013 in Infante Garcia-Consuegra v Commission, F‑10/12, EU:F:2013:38, para. 29 2. The EU judicature cannot, without encroaching on the prerogatives of the administrative authority, issue directions to an EU institution by ordering it to take the measures necessary for the enforcement of a judgment by which a decision is annulled. However, in disputes of a financial character, the EU judicature has unlimited jurisdiction under the second sentence of Article 91(1) of the Staff Regulations, allowing it to order the defendant institution to pay specified amounts together with default interest, where appropriate. In an application for annulment of a refusal to grant the applicant the benefit of the installation allowance and the daily subsistence allowance, the head of claim seeking an order for the administration to pay the amounts due for those two allowances together with default interest is sufficiently precise and must be declared admissible even if the applicant has not submitted any calculation of the amounts claimed, since those can be directly and objectively ascertained by applying two clear and indisputable parameters, namely the applicant’s basic monthly salary and whether or not he qualifies for the household allowance, at the time of and during the relevant periods for the purpose of each of the provisions setting out those allowances. (see paras 66-68) See: Judgment of 16 January 2007 in Borbély v Commission, F‑126/05, EU:F:2007:12, paras 71 to 73