Keywords

Summary



Keywords

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1. Officials ° Remuneration ° Late adjustment ° Distinction between default interest and compensatory interest

(Staff Regulations, Art. 65(2))

2. Officials ° Non-contractual liability of the institutions ° Conditions ° Fault on the part of the administration ° Damage ° Causal link

(Staff Regulations, Art. 65(2))

3. Appeals ° Pleas ° Erroneous assessment of the facts ° Inadmissible ° Dismissed

(EEC Treaty, Art. 168a; EEC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51)

4. Officials ° Remuneration ° Adjustment ° Arrears of salary ° Default interest ° No entitlement in the absence of a certain or ascertainable debt

(Staff Regulations, Art. 65(2))

5. Appeals ° Pleas ° Plea submitted for the first time at the stage of the appeal ° Inadmissible

(EEC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51)

6. Appeals ° Pleas ° Erroneous assessment of evidence duly produced ° Erroneous assessment of the appropriate compensation for the damage ° Inadmissible ° Dismissed

(EEC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51)

7. Appeals ° Cross-appeal ° Time-limit

(EEC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51; Rules of Procedure, Arts 115 and 116)

Summary

1. The distinction between default interest and compensatory interest is well founded in Community law, in particular in disputes regarding belated settlement of officials' remuneration.

2. In a claim for damages brought by an official, the Community may only be held liable if a number of conditions are satisfied: there must be unlawful conduct on the part of the institutions, actual damage and a causal link between the act and the damage alleged to have been suffered.

3. According to Article 168a of the EEC Treaty there is a right of appeal on points of law only. That restriction is referred to in the first paragraph of Article 51 of the EEC Statute of the Court of Justice, which specifies the grounds on which an appeal lies, namely lack of competence of the Court of First Instance, a breach of procedure before it which adversely affects the interests of the appellant and the infringement of Community law by the Court of First Instance. The appeal may rely on pleas relating to the infringement of rules of law, to the exclusion of any appraisal of the facts, and is therefore admissible only in so far as it is claimed that the decision of the Court of First Instance is incompatible with the rules of law the application of which it was called upon to ensure.

The Court of First Instance thus has exclusive jurisdiction to find the facts except where the substantive inaccuracy of its findings is apparent from the documents submitted to it.

However, when the Court of First Instance has found and assessed the facts, defined their legal nature and determined the legal consequences, the Court of Justice has jurisdiction to exercise the review required of it by Article 168a of the EEC Treaty.

4. An obligation to pay default interest can arise only where the amount of the principal sum owed is certain or can at least be ascertained on the basis of established objective factors. The powers conferred on the Council by Article 65 of the Staff Regulations for adjusting the remuneration and pensions of officials and other servants and for fixing the weightings applicable to such remuneration involve the exercise of a discretion and therefore there is no certainty as to the amount by which the remuneration and pensions will be adjusted until the Council has exercised its powers and adopted the regulation in question. Before the date of the adoption of the regulation making the adjustment, therefore, it was neither certain nor ascertainable what was owing to the officials and therefore default interest could not begin to run.

5. A plea put forward for the first time in the course of the appeal before the Court of Justice must be dismissed as inadmissible. To allow a party to put forward on that occasion a plea which it did not raise before the Court of First Instance would be allow it to bring before the Court, whose jurisdiction in appeals is limited, a case of wider ambit than that which came before the Court of First Instance. In an appeal the Court' s jurisdiction is thus confined to review of the findings of law on the pleas argued before the Court of First Instance.

6. The Court of Justice has no more jurisdiction, on principle, to examine the evidence which the Court of First Instance accepted in support of the facts than to find the facts themselves. Provided that the evidence was duly obtained and the rules and general principles of law relating to the burden of proof were observed, as also the rules of procedure in relation to the taking of evidence, it is for the Court of First Instance alone to assess the value which should be attached to the evidence produced.

Similarly once the Court of First Instance has found the existence of damage, it alone has jurisdiction to assess, within the confines of the application, the most appropriate compensation.

7. Where a party submits in its response in the course of an appeal a cross-appeal seeking payment from the other party of sums sought at first instance but refused by the Court of First Instance, the only time-limit applicable to the cross-appeal is that laid down in Article 115(1) of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice for lodging a response, that is to say, two months after service of the notice of appeal.