Keywords

Summary



Keywords

1. Actions for damages – Limitation period – Point from which time starts to run

(Art. 288, second para., EC; Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 46)

2. Actions for damages – Limitation period – Interruption

(Art. 288, second para., EC; Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 46)

3. Non-contractual liability – Conditions

(Art. 288, second para., EC)

Summary

1. The period of limitation for an action for liability of the Community cannot begin until all the requirements governing an obligation to provide compensation for damage are satisfied and, in particular, until the damage to be made good has materialised. Therefore, where the liability of the Community has its origin in a legislative measure, that period of limitation does not begin until the damaging effects of that measure have arisen. A different solution would call into question the principle of autonomy of actions, by making the procedure for an action for damages depend on the completion of an action for annulment.

That solution can be applied to disputes arising from individual measures. In those cases, the period of limitation begins as soon as the decision has produced its effects vis-à-vis the persons concerned by it. Where a fine is imposed on a company by a Commission decision, the damaging effects will arise vis-à-vis that undertaking as soon as it is ordered to pay the fine. Those orders were coupled with the option, made available in order to avoid having to pay the fines immediately, of providing bank guarantees. It is in fact irrelevant, as regards the starting point of the period of limitation, that the Community’s unlawful conduct was established by a ruling of that Court.

(see paras 29-31)

2. Under Article 46 of the Statute of the Court of Justice, the period of limitation is interrupted, in respect of non-contractual liability, if proceedings are instituted before the Court or if, prior to such proceedings, an application is made by the aggrieved party to the relevant institution of the Communities. Since Article 46 relates to actions against the Communities in respect of non-contractual liability, the ‘proceedings’ which fall within that provision, which, moreover, are treated as interrupting the period of limitation, are those which seek to put that liability in issue, in accordance with the second paragraph of Article 288 EC. An action for annulment cannot therefore be deemed to be ‘proceedings’ which will interrupt the limitation period for the purposes of Article 46 of the Statute of the Court of Justice.

(see para. 36)

3. For the non-contractual liability of the Community to arise, a number of conditions must be met, including, where the unlawfulness of a legal measure is at issue, the existence of a sufficiently serious breach of a rule of law intended to confer rights on individuals. As regards that condition, the decisive criterion for establishing that a breach of Community law is sufficiently serious is whether the Community institution concerned manifestly and gravely disregarded the limits on its discretion. Where that institution has only considerably reduced, or even no, discretion, the mere infringement of Community law may be sufficient to establish the existence of a sufficiently serious breach. The determining factor in deciding whether there has been such an infringement is not the general or individual nature of the act in question.

(see paras 47-48)