Keywords

Summary



Keywords

1. Appeals – Grounds of appeal – Incorrect assessment of the facts – Inadmissibility – Review by the Court of the assessment of the evidence – Excluded except in cases of distortion

(Art. 225(1) EC; Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 58, first para.)

2. Officials – Recovery of overpayment – Conditions – Patent lack of due reason for payment – Official seconded in the interests of the service to his country of origin – Payment of expatriation allowance and of the weighting fixed for the previous place of employment

(Staff Regulations, Arts 38(d) and 85; Annex VII, Art. 4)

3. Appeals – Grounds of appeal – Whether admissible – Conditions

(Art. 225 EC; Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 58, first para.; Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, Art. 112(1)(c))

Summary

1. Under Article 225(1) EC and the first paragraph of Article 58 of the Statute of the Court of Justice, an appeal is limited to points of law only and must be based on the grounds of lack of competence of the Court of First Instance, breach of procedure before it which adversely affects the interests of the applicant, or infringement of Community law by the Court of First Instance.

Therefore, the Court of First Instance has sole jurisdiction to find and appraise the facts, except in a case where the factual accuracy of its findings arises from evidence adduced before it. The appraisal of the facts by the Court of First Instance does not constitute, save where the clear sense of the evidence produced before it is distorted, a question of law which is subject, as such, to review by the Court of Justice.

(see paras 48-49)

2. The principle of maintaining an official’s overall remuneration where he has been seconded in the interests of the service cannot lead to the administration granting him allowances and benefits to which he is not entitled. Therefore, where a seconded official’s place of employment ought to have been determined as the place where he carried out the duties he was called upon to perform in the context of his secondment, it must be concluded that the party concerned wrongly received, within the meaning of Article 85 of the Staff Regulations, the sums paid by the administration by reason of the failure to take into account the change of his place of employment.

Concerning, more specifically, the expatriation allowance, even though the institution was initially unclear and took several months to give a ruling on the rights of the seconded official, an experienced official, with a high grade exercising ordinary care, could not have been unaware that payment of the allowance depended on expatriation within the meaning of Article 4 of Annex VII of the Staff Regulations, which is not the case where an official is seconded in order to carry out duties in his country of origin.

The provisions of the Staff Regulations cannot assist an official on secondment in his view that he is entitled to keep the place of his employment together with all the allowances which he was receiving there. First, the Staff Regulations contain no express provisions as to the determination of an official’s place of employment in the event of secondment and, secondly, payment of the allowances in question is expressly made subject to certain conditions.

(see paras 57, 59-60)

3. It follows from Article 225 EC, the first paragraph of Article 58 of the Statute of the Court of Justice and Article 112(1)(c) of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice that an appeal must indicate precisely the contested elements of the judgment which the appellant seeks to have set aside and also the legal arguments specifically advanced in support of the appeal.

(see para. 65)