Case T‑228/12 AJ

DD

v

Council of the European Union

‛Legal aid — Application lodged before an action for annulment had been brought — Restrictive measures taken in respect of certain officials of Belarus’

Summary — Order of the General Court (First Chamber, Extended Composition), 10 November 2014

Judicial proceedings — Application for legal aid — Conditions for granting — Application lodged before an action for annulment has been brought against acts imposing restrictive measures on the applicant — Admission — Applicant not producing un authorisation for the unblocking of frozen funds — Irrelevant

(Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Art. 47, second para, second and third sentences; Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Arts 94(1), and 96(3); Council Regulation No 765/2006, Art. 3(1))

To refuse an application for legal aid solely on the ground that the applicant has not produced authorisation from a national authority, as mentioned in Article 3(1) of Regulation No 765/2006 concerning restrictive measures against Belarus, even though the application for legal aid satisfies the conditions laid down in the Rules of Procedure of the General Court, would be to impede a fundamental right, namely the right to an effective remedy.

Those restrictive measures must be applied without the persons whose funds have been frozen being deprived of effective access to justice, particularly where the legality of the acts imposing those restrictive measures is in dispute. Accordingly, in order to enable the Rules of Procedure to be applied consistently with Regulation No 765/2006, the Court is obliged both to grant legal aid to any applicant listed in Annex I to that regulation who satisfies the conditions laid down in Article 94 et seq. of the Rules of Procedure — thus making it possible for the objective pursued by those rules to be achieved — and to ensure that the legal aid granted will be used only to cover that applicant’s legal fees and will not undermine the objective of the restrictive measure imposed, as defined in Article 2(2) of Regulation No 765/2006.

In that regard, the Rules of Procedure make it possible for the Court to ensure that legal aid will be used only to cover the applicant’s legal fees. First, only legal fees are mentioned in Article 94(1) of the Rules of Procedure as fees for which the cashier of the General Court can be held responsible. Second, under the third subparagraph of Article 96(3) of the Rules of Procedure, the General Court may, without having to fix the exact amount of the legal aid beforehand, specify in the order granting legal aid a limit which the lawyer’s disbursements and fees may not, in principle, exceed. Finally, it is standard practice for the General Court to pay the amount thus calculated directly to the designated lawyer, so that the applicant is not given an opportunity to divert the legal aid to serve purposes other than those for which it was granted. As for the lawyer, Regulation No 765/2006 places him under a duty not to hand over his remuneration, in whole or in part, to the applicant, just as he is forbidden, more generally, to make funds or economic resources available, directly or indirectly, to the applicant.

(see paras 26, 30, 32-36)