ORDER OF THE CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(First Chamber)

20 January 2009

Case F-77/07 DEP

Kay Labate

v

Commission of the European Communities

(Procedure – Taxation of costs)

Applications: by which Mrs Labate, first, sought reimbursement from the Commission of the fees and costs relating to order of 1 February 2008 in Case F‑77/07 Labate v Commission [2008] ECR-SC I-A-1-0000 and II-A-1-0000, totalling EUR 72 361.03, after a voluntary 30% reduction of the initial sum, second, offered to reduce the amount to EUR 45 000, and lastly, applied for taxation of costs.

Held: The amount of the costs recoverable by Mrs Labate in Case F‑77/07 is fixed at EUR 21 568.90.

Summary

Procedure – Costs – Taxation – Elements to be taken into consideration

(Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, Art 91(b)); Rules of Procedure of the Civil Service Tribunal, Art. 122)

The Community judicature is not empowered to tax the fees payable by the parties to their own lawyers, but to determine the amount of those fees which may be recovered from the party ordered to pay the costs. When ruling on an application for taxation of costs, it is not obliged to take account of any national scales of lawyers’ fees or any agreement in that regard between the party concerned and his agents or advisers.

In the absence of Community provisions laying down fee scales, the Court must make an unfettered assessment of the facts of the case, taking into account the purpose and nature of the proceedings, their significance from the point of view of Community law, the difficulties presented by the case, the amount of work generated by the case for the agents or advisers involved and the financial interest which the parties had in the proceedings. As regards the scale of the work, the Court must take account of the total number of hours of work capable of being judged objectively necessary for the purpose of those proceedings.

(see paras 24, 25, 28)

See:

T-290/04 DEP Kaysersberg v Commission [1998] ECR II‑4105, para. 20; order of 9 September 2002 in T-182/00 DEP Pannella v Parliament, not published in the ECR, para. 29; T-171/00 DEP Spruyt v Commission [2002] ECR-SC I‑A‑225 and II‑1127, paras 25, 26 and 29; T‑7/98 DEP, T‑208/98 DEP and T‑109/99 DEP De Nicola v EIB [2004] ECR-SC I‑A‑219 and II‑973, para. 32