ORDER OF THE EUROPEAN UNION CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(Second Chamber)

28 January 2013

Case F‑92/12

Luigi Marcuccio

v

European Commission

(Civil service — Article 34(1) of the Rules of Procedure — Application lodged by fax within the period prescribed for bringing an action and signed by means of a stamp reproducing a lawyer’s signature or other means of reproduction — Action lodged out of time — Manifestly inadmissible)

Application: brought under Article 270 TFEU, applicable to the EAEC Treaty pursuant to Article 106a thereof, whereby Mr Marcuccio seeks, in particular, annulment of the decision of the European Commission to withhold amounts from his invalidity allowance for October, November and December 2011 and reimbursement of the sums withheld, together with interest. The lodging of the application by post was preceded by the lodging by fax, on 5 September 2012, of a document presented as being a copy of that application.

Held: The action is dismissed as manifestly inadmissible. The applicant is ordered to bear his own costs.

Summary

Judicial proceedings — Application initiating proceedings — Formal requirements — Lawyer’s handwritten signature — Substantive rule of strict application — Application lodged by fax — Lawyer’s signature placed on the document by means of a stamp or other means of reproduction — Date of receipt of the fax not to be taken into account for the purpose of assessing compliance with the time-limit for bringing an action — Correctly signed application lodged out of time — Action manifestly inadmissible

(Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 21; Rules of Procedure of the Civil Service Tribunal, Art. 34(1); Staff Regulations, Art. 91(3))

The requirement for a signature on the application initiating the proceedings, which can have been placed there only by the party’s representative within the meaning of Article 34(1) of the Rules of Procedure of the Civil Service Tribunal, is intended, with the object of legal certainty, to ensure the authenticity of the application and to exclude the risk that the application is not in reality the work of the duly authorised person. That requirement must therefore be considered to be an essential procedural rule and to be of strict application, so that failure to comply therewith renders the action inadmissible. In that regard, the indirect and mechanical fashion of ‘signing’ consisting in the placing on the application initiating the proceedings of a stamp reproducing the signature of the lawyer instructed by the applicant does not in itself enable it to be determined that it is necessarily the lawyer himself who signed the procedural document in question.

Consequently, an application lodged by fax and signed by means of a stamp reproducing the lawyer’s signature or another means of reproduction does not bear the original of the signature of the applicant’s lawyer, contrary to first subparagraph of Article 34(1) of the Rules of Procedure of the Tribunal, and must for that reason be declared inadmissible.

It follows that the date of receipt of that document sent by fax cannot be taken into account for the purpose of determining whether the time-limit for bringing an action, laid down in Article 91(3) of the Staff Regulations, was complied with and that the only application that can be taken into account in that respect is the one received at the Registry of the Tribunal and containing the handwritten signature of the applicant’s lawyer.

Where that application reaches the Registry after the expiry of the time-limit for bringing an action, it must be regarded as being out of time, thus rendering the action inadmissible.

(see paras 25, 26, 29, 30)

See:

23 May 2007, T‑233/06 P Parliament v Eistrup, paras 51 and 52