1.

On 28 December 1981 nine officials employed at the Joint Research Centre, Ispra (Italy), brought an action (in Case 323/81) for the annulment of their salary statements for February and March 1981, which the Commission had calculated on the basis of Regulation (EEC) No 397/81 of 10 February 1981 (Official Journal 1981, L 46, p. 1). Jan Amesz, Rolf Bauch, Jakob Flamm, Hans Hoffmann, Helmut Knoeppel, Henricus Nijman, Anton Birke, Helmut Henrichs and Bernd Weckermann argued, in particular, that, in updating the tables of salaries and other components of remuneration, the Council had fixed the weighting for Italy without taking into account either the price increases established in October 1980 or the considerable difference between the cost of living index for the province of Varese and the same index for Rome. The applicants therefore claimed that the Court should: (a) declare that they were entitled to a remuneration which took account of purchasing power in the province of Varese and abroad at least since 1 July 1980; (b) order the defendant to pay them the difference in salary, together with interest thereon. On 20 January 1982, the President of the Second Chamber decided, with the consent of the parties, to suspend the proceedings sine die, pending a decision by the First Chamber of the Court on a number of similar applications lodged two years earlier by seven of the aforesaid officials (Case 543/79 Birke v Commission and Joined Cases 532, 534, 567, 618 and 660/79 Amesz and Others v Commission). A considerable period of time elapsed. On 15 December 1982, the Court declared in two interlocutory judgments (Birke v Commission [1982] ECR 4425 and Amesz v Commission [1982] ECR 4465) that Regulation No 3087/78 (on the basis of which the contested salary statements had been calculated) was ‘not applicable ... in so far as it takes no account of the cost of living in Varese and limits the retroactive effect of the adjustment of the weighting to 1 January 1978’ and ordered the Commission ‘to report to the Court ... on the measures taken to comply with this judgment’. In February 1984 the Commission complied with that request and informed the Court that, by Regulation (EEC) No 3681/83 of 19 December 1983 (Official Journal 1983, L 368, p. 1), the Council had adjusted as from 1 January 1976 the weightings applicable to the salaries of officials employed, on the one hand, in Italy excluding Varese, and, on the other, in Varese itself. In accordance with that regulation, the Commission had paid all the applicants the arrears owed to them. However, the officials concerned were not content with the payment of arrears. They claimed that they were also entitled to compensation (a) for the delay in adjusting the weighting and (b) for the depreciation in the value of the Italian lira before the arrears were paid (see in that connection the Opinion which I delivered on 11 December 1984 in Case 158/79 Roumengous v Commission [1985] ECR 39). In its final judgment delivered on 15 January 1985 (Joined Cases 532, 534, 567, 600, 618, 660/79 and 543/79 Amesz v Commission [1985] ECR 55), the Court upheld only one of those claims. The Commission was ordered ‘to pay default interest at the rate of 6% per annum on the amount of the arrears of remuneration which it paid in pursuance of Regulation No 3681/83’, whilst the claim for the payment of compensatory interest to make good the damage suffered by the applicants as a result of the depreciation of the Italian lira was held to be a ‘fresh’ claim and, consequently, inadmissible.