CELEX: C1996/354/68
Language: en
Date: 1996-11-23 00:00:00
Title: Removal from the register of Joined Cases T-454/93, T-456/93 and T-457/93

23 . 11 . 96       I EN                   Official Journal of the European Communities                                No C 354/35
parties to the contract for the sale of the property constitute      cabinet to which he was attached. The applicant states in
a commercially viable compromise of the type arrived at by           that regard that he had himself requested the administration
reasonable parties to transactions effected in the ordinary          for assurances to that effect, having regard to the amount of
course of business . The contested decision therefore has no         the sum in question, and that over one year had elapsed
legal basis in Article 92 ( 1 ) of the EC Treaty and should          before the department concerned had discovered the
consequently be annulled for that reason alone .                     existence of a possible error.
Furthermore, the decision infringes Article 190 of the EC
Treaty, in that it does not contain a sufficiently clear and         The applicant maintains, first, that Article 45 of the
unambiguous statement of reasons .                                   Conditions of Employment of Other Servants and Article 85
                                                                     of the Staff Regulations have been infringed, in that the
                                                                     criteria for the recovery of undue payments are not fulfilled
                                                                     in the present case . The Commission did not pay the
                                                                     allowance by mistake but with full knowledge of the facts,
                                                                     applying a practice by which it had established a system for
Action brought on 9 October 1996 by Claus Jensen against             the payment of advances subject to recovery thereof on
      the Commission of the European Communities                     certain conditions. Nor, second, was there any question of
                      ( Case T-156/96 )                              his having acted in bad faith since, as far as the
                        ( 96/C 354/67 )                              administration was concerned, the payment was not undue
                                                                     at the time when it was made and the applicant cannot
               (Language of the case: French)                        therefore be regarded as having been aware of any
                                                                     irregularity whatsoever. He considers in that regard that it
                                                                     appears necessary to interpret Article 85 of the Staff
An action against the Commission of the European
                                                                     Regulations as not excluding cases of bad faith other than
Communities was brought before the Court of First
                                                                     those involving awareness of the irregularity of the payment.
Instance of the European Communities on 9 October 1996
                                                                     In any event, according to the applicant, the Commission
by Claus Jensen, residing at Waterloo ( Belgium ),
                                                                     has not proved that, in the circumstances of the case, he was
represented by Marc-Albert Lucas, of the Liege Bar, with an
                                                                     aware , when the installation allowance was paid to him,
address for service in Luxembourg at the chambers of
                                                                     that that payment was irregular or that it had to fulfil certain
Evelyne Korn, 21 Rue de Nassau .                                     conditions in order to become definitive .
The applicant claims that the Court should :                         In addition, the applicant pleads infringement of Article 24
                                                                     of the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants, since
— order measures of inquiry as proposed in the grounds of            the advance payment system is inconsistent with that
    the application,                                                 provision. In his view, Article 24 requires the
— annul the defendant's decision, notified to him by a letter
                                                                     administration, upon the entry into service of an official or
    dated 13 November 1995 from the Head of the Unit                 agent, to adopt a definitive decision on entitlement to the
                                                                     allowance on the basis of the expected period of service . It
    dealing with pensions and relations with former staff
                                                                     therefore precludes the adoption by the administration of an
    which he received on 23 November 1995 , ordering the
                                                                     initial, purely provisional decision followed, subsequently,
    recovery from him of the installation allowance paid to
                                                                     by a definitive decision based on the period of service
    him, by means of the deduction of part of it from his
                                                                     actually completed .
    severance grant and the issue of a debit note in respect of
    the balance ,
— order the defendant to pay him damages in a sum
    equivalent to the amount of the installation allowance
    received by him, namely Bfr 565 976 ,                            Removal from the register of Joined Cases T-454/93 ,
                                                                                       T-456/93 and T-457/93(M
— order the defendant to pay the costs .
                                                                                              ( 96/C 354/68
Pleas in law and main arguments adduced in support:
                                                                                    (Language of the case: English)
The applicant, an official of the Danish civil service on
secondment to the Commission, contests the decision of the           By order of 2 October 1996 the President of the Fourth
appointing authority ordering, in consequence of the                 Chamber of the Court of First Instance of the European
termination of his contract of employment and by reason of           Communities ordered the removal from the register of
his appointment as a national expert, the repayment of the           Joined Cases T-454/93 , T-456/93 and T-457/93 : Elders
sums paid by way of installation allowance upon him taking           Trading Limited and Paterson Elders ( Produce ) Limited,
up his duties in the cabinet of the Danish Member of the             Barretts & Baird (Wholesale ) Limited, FMC pic, FMC
Commission .                                                         ( Meat ) Limited, D. T. Duggins Limited, Marshall
                                                                     ( Lamberhurst ) Limited, Montelupo Ltd and North Devon
He points out, first of all, that he was given unambiguous           Meat Ltd v. Commission of the European Communities .
assurances on a number of occasions by the competent
department within the defendant institution that the                 (!) OJ No C 290, 6 . 11 . 1992 .
payments in question were to be regarded as having been
definitively acquired by him, even if he were to leave the