ORDER OF THE EUROPEAN UNION CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(Third Chamber)

13 December 2013

Case F‑2/13

Luigi Marcuccio

v

European Commission

(Civil service — Time-limit for bringing proceedings — Language in which the decision rejecting a complaint was written — Article 34(1) and (6) of the Rules of Procedure — Signed copy of the application sent by fax within the time-limit for bringing proceedings — That copy and the original signed application received subsequently not the same — Action lodged out of time — Manifest inadmissibility)

Application:      under Article 270 TFEU, applicable to the EAEC Treaty pursuant to Article 106a thereof, in which Mr Marcuccio seeks, first, annulment of the implied decision by which the European Commission rejected his request to apply to his salary the correction coefficient for Angola and to pay his salary in euros under Articles 12 and 13 of Annex X to the Staff Regulations of Officials of the European Union (‘the Staff Regulations’) and annulment of the decision by which the European Commission rejected his complaint of 21 May 2012 and, secondly, compensation for the damage those decisions caused him.

Held:      The action is dismissed as manifestly inadmissible. Mr Marcuccio is to bear his own costs and is ordered to pay the costs incurred by the European Commission.

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 sent by post — Consequence — Date of receipt of fax not taken into account for assessing whether the time-limit for bringing proceedings has been met

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

In European Union civil service disputes, for the purposes of lodging the original of any pleading within the required time-limit, Article 34 of the Rules of Procedure of the Civil Service Tribunal, and in particular paragraphs 1 and 6 thereof, concerning the possibility of taking into account as the date on which an action is brought the date when a signed copy of the original was lodged by fax, requires the representative of the party to append a handwritten signature to the original of the pleading before sending it by fax and to lodge that original at the Registry of the Tribunal no later than ten days afterwards.

In those circumstances, where it appears in retrospect that the signed original of the pleading which is lodged in hard copy at the Registry of the Tribunal within ten days of a copy being faxed does not at least bear the same signature as that appearing on the faxed document, that evidence is sufficient for it to be held that those two documents are different, even if the signatures were appended by the same person.

Since it is not for the Tribunal to determine whether both texts coincide word for word, it is clear that, where the signature appended on one of the two documents is not identical to the signature appended on the other, the faxed document is not a copy of the signed original of the pleading that was lodged by post.

Moreover, if the transmission of the faxed text does not meet the conditions for legal certainty imposed by Article 34 of the Rules of Procedure, the date on which the faxed document was lodged cannot be taken into account for the purposes of observance of the time-limit for bringing proceedings.

(see paras 40-43)

See:

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

14 November 2013, T‑283/13 P Marcuccio v Commission, para. 14

11 March 2013, F‑131/12 Marcuccio v Commission, para. 22; 28 June 2013, F‑44/11 Marcuccio v Commission, para. 37, on appeal before the General Court of the European Union, Case T‑504/13 P; 17 October 2013, F‑127/12 Marcuccio v Commission, para. 21