Action brought on 8 November 2012 - Planet v Commission

(Case T-489/12)

Language of the case: Greek

Parties

Applicant: Planet AE, a public limited consultancy company (Athens, Greece) (represented by: V. Khristianos, lawyer)

Defendant: European Commission

Form of order sought

Declare that the European Commission, by disallowing personnel costs for the applicant's high ranking staff, infringed the ONTOGOV, FIT and RACWeb contracts and that the personnel costs submitted to the Commission in respect of the abovementioned contracts for the applicant's high ranking staff, amounting to EUR 547 653.42 are consequently eligible costs and ought not to be repaid by the applicant to the Commission, and

order the European Commission to pay the applicant's costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

This action concerns the Commission's liability under the following contracts: (a) No 507237 for completion of the project 'Ontology enabled E-Gov Service Configuration (ONTOGOV)', (b) No 027090 for completion of the project 'Fostering self-adaptive e-government service improvement using semantic technologies (FIT)' and (c) No 045101 for completion of the project 'Risk Assessment for Customs in Western Balkans (RACWeb)', pursuant to Article 272 TFEU and the first paragraph of Article 340 TFEU. Specifically, the applicant claims that, although it performed its contractual obligations fully, properly and very successfully, the Commission, contrary to the above mentioned contracts and the rules governing audit procedure, disallowed the applicant's personnel costs which relate to its three high ranking staff.

More particularly, the applicant relies on two pleas in law in support of its action:

First, the applicant maintains that in no way did it infringe its contractual obligations concerning personnel costs, since (a) the personnel costs for the applicant's three high ranking staff meet all the conditions of eligibility, in accordance with the terms of the contracts at issue, and (b) in no way do the contracts prohibit the participation of high ranking staff in the funded projects.

Secondly, the applicant maintains that the Commission was in breach of its contractual obligations in the audit procedure, since (a) the Commission's audit was conducted in breach of Greek and International Standards on Auditing, (b) the Commission's request for the production of documentation which Planet was under no obligation to preserve is contrary to the contracts at issue and is an attempt to effect a retrospective unilateral alteration of Planet's contractual obligations and (c) the conclusions of the audit at issue are incompatible with the conclusions of previous audits by the Commission at Planet.

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