Order — ECLI:EU:T:2001:11
Date: 2001-01-17
Language of the case: Italian
Court formation: Second Chamber
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (1957)
Subject matter: Non-contractual liability
Concepts: Limitation periods
Procedure: Action for damages - inadmissible
Origin: Italy

Summary of the Order 
1. Actions for damages — Limitation period — Starting point — Applicant consider­
ing, when it lodges its application, that it does not have all the evidence to show that 
the Community is liable — No effect 
(EAEC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 44) 
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SUMMARY — CASE T-124/99 
2. Actions for damages — Limitation period — Interruption — Conditions 
(EC Treaty, Art. 173 (now, after amendment, Art. 230 EC) and Art. 175 (now 
Art. 232 EC); EAEC Treaty, Arts 146 and 148; EAEC Statute of the Court of Justice, 
Art. 44) 
1. The case-law according to which the 
limitation period for actions for 
damages cannot begin to run until all 
the conditions governing the obligation 
to pay compensation have been satis­
fied seeks to establish the criterion that, 
if the liability of the Community has its 
origin in a legislative measure, the 
damage which is the subject-matter of 
a claim for compensation must have 
materialised. In that situation, there­
fore, the limitation period cannot begin 
to run until the harmful effects of that 
measure have occurred. Therefore, far 
from rejecting the decisive criterion, 
laid down in Article 44 of the EAEC 
Statute of the Court of Justice, of 
occurrence of the act giving rise to the 
damage, that case-law, in essence, 
merely defines the parameters of that 
criterion in a situation in which an 
action for compensation is brought in 
respect of damage which the applicants 
may suffer as a consequence of the 
implementation of a legislative mea­
sure adopted at Community level. In 
any event, the fact that an applicant 
may have considered, when it sent its 
request for compensation, that it did 
not yet have all the evidence it needed 
to prove to the requisite legal standard 
in judicial proceedings that the Com­
munity was liable could not, as such, 
prevent the limitation period from 
running. If that were the case, a 
confusion would arise between the 
procedural criterion relating to the 
commencement of the limitation period 
and the finding that the conditions for 
liability were satisfied, which can ulti­
mately be made only by the court 
before which the matter has been 
brought for final adjudication on its 
substance. 
(see paras 23-24) 
2. Under Article 44 of the EAEC Statute 
of the Court of Justice, the limitation 
period in respect of an action for 
damages against the Community is 
interrupted either by the application 
made to the Community Court, or by a 
preliminary request addressed to the 
relevant institution, it being however 
understood that, in the latter case, 
interruption only occurs if the request 
is followed by an application within 
the time-limits determined by reference 
to Article 173 of the Treaty (now, after 
amendment, Article 230 EC) or Arti­
cle 175 thereof (now Article 232 EC), 
which correspond to Articles 146 and 
148 of the EAEC Treaty. 
(see para. 25) 
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