Case T-223/06 P 
European Parliament 
v 
Ole Eistrup 
(Appeal — Application signed by a lawyer by means of a stamp — 
Inadmissibility of the action) 
Judgment of the Court of First Instance (Appeal Chamber), 23 May 2007 II - 1584 
Summary of the Judgment 
Procedure — Application initiating proceedings — Formal requirements 
(Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 21, second para., Rules of Procedure of the Court of First 
Instance, Art. 43(1), first para., and Art. 44(6); Instructions to the Registrar of the Court of First 
Instance, Art. 6(1), (3), (4) and (5)) 
II - 1581 
SUMMARY — CASE T-223/06 P 
As the law relating to procedures before the 
Community courts stands at present, the 
signature, appended by the lawyer in his own 
hand, on the original of the application 
initiating proceedings constitutes the sole 
means of ensuring that responsibility for the 
execution and content of that procedural 
document is assumed by a person entitled to 
represent the applicant before the Commu­
nity courts. The requirement of a hand­
written signature for the purposes of the first 
subparagraph of Article 43(1) of the Rules of 
Procedure of the Court of First Instance is 
thus designed, for reasons of legal certainty, 
to ensure the authenticity of the application 
and to eliminate the risk that that document 
is not in fact the work of the author 
authorised for that purpose. That require­
ment must therefore be regarded as an 
essential procedural rule and be applied 
strictly, so that failure to comply with it 
leads to the inadmissibility of the action. 
Absence of a handwritten signature on the 
application by a lawyer entitled to sign is not 
among the formal irregularities that are 
capable of being cured in accordance with 
the second paragraph of Article 21 of the 
Statute of the Court of Justice, Article 44(6) 
of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of 
First Instance and Article 6(1), (4) and (5) of 
the Instructions to the Registrar of the Court 
of First Instance. 
It follows that the fact of appending, on an 
application initiating proceedings, a stamp 
reproducing the signature of the lawyer 
instructed by the applicant leads to the 
inadmissibility of the action, since that 
indirect and mechanical way of 'signing' 
does not by itself support the finding that it 
is necessarily the lawyer himself who signed 
the procedural document in question. Such a 
substantial defect cannot be cured by sub­sequent explanations by the lawyer leaving 
no doubt that he himself signed the applica­
tion, or by confirmation to that effect by the 
applicant, or by service of the application on 
the defendant, or by subsequent receipt by 
the Court of First Instance of a version 
bearing a handwritten signature. Nor can it 
be pleaded, in support of regularisation, that 
the defendant has not shown that there 
would be an infringement of the rights of the 
defence if the application were declared 
admissible, since breach of an essential 
procedural requirement leads to the inad­
missibility of the action, without there being 
any need to consider the effects of such a 
breach or, in particular, to establish whether 
the absence of a handwritten signature on 
the application resulted in harm to the other 
party. 
Nor can the concept of pardonable error be 
usefully relied on in such a case, even for the 
purpose, not of making the application 
vitiated by the absence of a handwritten 
signature admissible, but of preventing the 
time-limit for bringing an action from 
running against the interested party, so as 
to allow the subsequent submission of a 
properly signed version of the application, 
which would not be considered to be out of 
II - 1582 
PARLIAMENT v EISTRUP 
time. In the absence of any exceptional 
circumstances which prevented him from 
signing the application by hand, a lawyer 
who uses a signature stamp does not display 
all the diligence required of a normally well-informed person; consultation of the relevant 
texts, in particular Article 6(3) of the 
Instructions to the Registrar, should have 
led him, as a conscientious and prudent 
professional, to sign the application by hand. 
(see paras 48, 50-54, 58-60, 64-66) 
II - 1583