ORDER OF THE EUROPEAN UNION CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(Second Chamber)

19 September 2013

Case F‑31/13

Luigi Marcuccio

v

European Commission

(Civil service — Articles 34(1) and 34(6) of the Rules of Procedure of the Civil Service Tribunal — Application lodged by fax within the time-limit for initiating proceedings, extended by ten days on account of distance — Application lodged by post within the following ten days — Applications not identical — Action out of time)

Application:      under Article 270 TFUE, applicable to the EAEC Treaty by virtue of Article 106a thereof, seeking amongst other things annulment of the decision of the European Commission rejecting Mr Marcuccio’s request of 1 March 2012, as supplemented by a letter of 12 March 2012, and of the decision rejecting his complaint of 12 July 2012, together with compensation for damage said to have been occasioned by the Commission’s decision of March 2002, reassigning him from its delegation in Luanda (Angola) to the Commission’s headquarters in Brussels (Belgium). The postal filing of the original application was preceded, on 27 March 2013, by the fax transmission of a document presented as a copy of the original application.

Held:      The application is dismissed as manifestly inadmissible. Mr Marcuccio is to bear his own costs.

Summary

Judicial proceedings — Application initiating proceedings — Formal requirements — Application lodged by fax within the time-limit for bringing proceedings — Lawyer’s hand-written signature different from that on the original application received by post — Consequence — Date of receipt of the fax not taken into account in determining whether the proceedings had been brought within the time-limit

(Rules of Procedure of the Civil Service Tribunal, Art. 34(1) and (6); Staff Regulations, Art. 91(3))

In relation to civil service proceedings, for the purposes of regular filing of pleadings, Article 34 of the Rules of Procedure of the Civil Service Tribunal (in particular paragraphs 1 and 6, which permit an application to be filed by fax), require the applicant’s representative to sign the original document by hand before sending it by fax, and to file that same original at the Tribunal Registry no more than ten days thereafter.

Against that background, if it subsequently appears that the original of the document which is physically filed at the registry within ten days of the fax transmission does not bear the same signature as the faxed document, it must be considered that two different pleadings have been filed at the registry, even if the signatures were affixed by the same person. It is not for the Tribunal to verify that the two documents are identical word-for-word, and thus it is plain that, where the signature appearing on one of the two documents is not identical to that appearing on the other, the faxed document is not a copy of the original of the document filed by post.

Furthermore, since the transmission of the document by fax does not satisfy the requirements of legal certainty laid down in Article 34 of the Rules of Procedure, the filing date of the document sent by fax cannot be taken into account for the purposes of determining whether the time limit for bringing proceedings has been observed.

(see paras 19-20, 22)

See:

13 November 2001 T‑138/01 R F v Court of Auditors, paras 8 and 9