Case T-417/23: Action brought on 19 July 2023 — TO v EEA
Date: 2023-07-19
Institutions: General Court
Subjects: European official, allowances and expenses, damages, expatriate worker, indemnification, interest, staff regulations (EU), work contract








C_202300050EN.000101.fmx.xml












Official Journal of the European Union


EN
Series C













C/2023/50


9.10.2023





Action brought on 19 July 2023 — TO v EEA
(Case T-417/23)
(C/2023/50)
Language of the case: French

Parties


Applicant: TO (represented by: É. Boigelot, lawyer)

Defendant: European Environment Agency (EEA)

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:






—


annul the EEA’s implicit decision made on [confidential] (1) rejecting the complaint submitted by the applicant on [confidential], and the EEA’s decision of [confidential] notified on [confidential] expressly rejecting the applicant’s request of [confidential];










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consequently, grant the applicant’s initial request, which seeks the following:










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the payment of the sum of EUR 24 950 by way of compensation for maladministration on the part of the EEA based on the negligent conduct of its services consisting in, first, wrongly denying her the expatriation allowance to which she was unquestionably entitled and which had initially been credited to her on a regular basis on the pretext of an ‘extraordinary recovery’ referred to on a payslip [confidential] drawn up by her new and current employer [confidential] and, second, failing voluntarily and within a reasonable period to implement the decision taken by the EEA and officially communicated to her on [confidential] to reimburse her that amount of expatriation allowance recognised as wrongly deducted;






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the amount claimed is broken down as follows:






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EUR 2 950, corresponding to the amount of the expatriation allowance wrongfully deducted in the context of the failure to comply with the annulling judgment of 11 June 2019 (Case T-462/17);










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EUR 22 000, in respect of combined material and non-material damage;














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the applicant also claims that the amount corresponding to that wrongly and improperly deducted installation allowance should be increased by interest at the rate of 5 % per annum from [confidential], the date of the deduction;














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an explication as to what the additional deduction of EUR 500 appearing on the same payslip [confidential] corresponds, since the reference ‘Ret.Ant.Ret/Pens’ is unclear in that regard and does enable it to be determined whether that deduction was justified and, where appropriate, reimbursement of an equivalent amount by way of compensation if the deduction in question proves to be unfounded;










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order the defendant to pay all of the costs, in accordance with Article 134 of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court of the European Union.





Pleas in law and main arguments

In support of the action, the applicant relies on two pleas in law.






1.


First plea in law, alleging infringement of the second paragraph of Article 25 of the Staff Regulations of Officials of the European Union (‘the Staff Regulations’), of the duty to state reasons, of Articles 19, 24 and 92 of the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants of the European Union, and of Article 5(5) of Annex VII to the Staff Regulations containing the rules on remuneration and reimbursement of expenses.










2.


Second plea in law, alleging (i) breach of the principle of sound administration guaranteed by Article 41 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union; (ii) breach of the principle requiring the administration to adopt a decision solely on the basis of legally permissible grounds, by which is meant grounds that are relevant and not vitiated by manifest errors of assessment; (iii) breach of the principle that agreements be performed in good faith; (iv) breach of the duty to have regard for the welfare of officials; (v) failure to have regard for the fact that remuneration payable under the contract of an agent may not be subject to a time limit as well as the rules applicable to that contract; (vi) a failure to observe legitimate expectations; and (vii) a failure to comply with the reasonable period which the administration has available to it in order to fulfil its own obligations.






(1)  Confidential data omitted.


ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2023/50/oj
ISSN 1977-091X (electronic edition)