2.

There is a second argument, presented as a secondary point in the application, although during the oral proceedings you were told that it was the main argument in support of the admissibility of the appeals: it is said that your judgment in Case 70/63 constitutes a new factor requiring the defendant to reconsider its position on the meaning of various articles of the Staff Regulations. The refusal of the defendant to agree with the complaints submitted after this judgment took place is said to constitute a new decision which can be contested. And in support of this argument reference is made to your judgment in Joined Cases 42 and 49/59, SNUPAT (Rec. 1961, p. 98). Thus the question which emerges is what significance is to be attached to your judgment in the appeal brought by Mr Colotti. Can other officials, who claim to be in the same legal or factual situation as Mr Collotti was, reopen the issue, submit new complaints and benefits from new time-limits in order to contest decisions taken concerning them at an earlier stage? This question seems to me to have already been decided by your judgment of 17 June last in Case 43/64, the one brought by Richard Müller. In that judgment you said that apart from the parties the only persons concerned by the legal effects of a judgment of the Court annulling a measure are ‘the persons direcdy affected by the measure which is annulled’. It is only as regards these persons that it can constitute a ‘new factor’. As has been said, it is one thing to be direcdy affected by the measure annulled, and it is another to have an interest in the rule of law, the disregard of which has lead to the annulment of the disputed measure. It is only for the former, who are also the less numerous, that the judgment of the Court constitutes a new factor. The applicants note that the judgment in Case 70/63 gave rise to numerous appeals made by officials of the various institutions. They further note that the institutions, which had consulted together in order to apply identical conditions when the Staff Regulations were published, did so again as soon as your judgment was known. All that is true and is to be explained by an elementary concern for good administration. It shows that the interpretation of paragraphs (1) and (4) of Article 102 of the Staff Regulations of the EEC and of the sole Article of Annex 10 to the Staff Regulations of the ECSC presented a problem which was common to the Communities as a whole. However, this certainly does not mean that the officials of these Communities, to whom the disputed Article applies, are directly concerned by the individual measure grading Mr Collotti in a way which you have judged illegal. This fact is enough to prevent your judgment from opening a new time-limit for bringing appeals. This solution is in accordance with principles which apply more or less absolutely in the legal systems of the various Member States. As the Secretariat-General of the Councils reminded you, in French law a judgment annulling a measure only affects the measure which is itself annulled, but not similar measures which the persons concerned have not contested in due time. Thus, for example, the annulling of steps taken to establish officials in one ministry does not require the administration to recommence such procedures taken in the same circumstances in other ministries and not contested within the limitation period. Italian law seems to apply analogous solutions. As for German law, while perhaps it is not yet definitively fixed, it at least tends to follow the same direction. Moreover, the case-law from the judgment in the Richard Müller case does not seem to me to be irreconcilable in any way with the judgment in Joined Cases 42 and 49/59 (SNUPAT v High Authority) referred to by the applicants. In the latter judgment you decided that the grounds of your earlier judgment in which you refused to allow the undertaking concerned the exemption which it claimed should have led the High Authority to re-examine and to withdraw the exemptions which had been given to other undertakings whose circumstances were analogous. These cases were about the financial aspects of the equalization scheme, which was organized in such a way that an alteration to the contribution made by one of the participating undertakings had an automatic repercussion on the position of all the others. Quite apart from the fact that the parties were identical, it is the very nature of the equalization scheme which seems to me to justify the solution which you adopted then And it is perfectly clear that this kind of close association is not to be found in the public service. Finally, during the oral procedure the applicants have emphasized that it is your function, to an even greater extent than in the case of the highest courts in national legal systems, to contribute to forming a system of law which at Community level is still in its initial stages. It has been said that you deliver judgments of principle which create the law, and from this it has been deduced that these judgments constitute new factors for applicants and for the institutions alike. Far be it from me, Members of the Court, to dream of belittling the importance of your role in the evolution of a system of law which has still to be worked out on many points. You have to give an interpretation of texts in order to apply them to the cases which are submitted to you. And once you have given an interpretation of a point it will normally be applied by the Communities in the future, when they are faced with a problem which is analogous to the one on which you have ruled. In this sense, and even though you are never bound by your prior decisions, it is indeed correct to say that your case-law has a creative effect, and that it helps to establish the law. However it establishes it for the future. In other words it does not allow any review of situations which have been finally settled by reason of the expiry of the period for bringing actions.