Case T‑401/11 P

Livio Missir Mamachi di Lusignano

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European Commission

(Appeal — Civil service — Officials — Non-contractual liability — Personal damage suffered by the close relatives of the deceased official — Damage suffered by the official before his death — Respective jurisdiction of the General Court and the Civil Service Tribunal — Rule of correspondence between the request for compensation and the complaint against the decision rejecting that request)

Summary — Judgment of the General Court (Appeal Chamber), 10 July 2014

1.      Judicial proceedings — Division of jurisdiction between the various courts of the European Union — Action brought before the Civil Service Tribunal by relatives of a deceased official, both in their capacity of legal successors and in their personal name and their own right — Civil Service Tribunal not having jurisdiction to hear the application for compensation for personal loss — Jurisdiction of the General Court — Ability of the applicants to bring before the General Court a single action seeking compensation for all the heads of damage suffered

(Arts 257 TFEU, 268 TFEU, 270 TFEU and 340 TFEU; Statute of the Court of Justice, Annex I, Art. 8(3), second para.; Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91)

2.      Actions brought by officials — Prior administrative complaint — Same subject-matter and legal basis — Submissions and arguments not made in the complaint but closely related to it — Admissibility — Application for default interest formulated for the first time before the General Court where the contested decision annulled — Admissibility — Strictly compensatory nature of the action — Irrelevant

(Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91)

1.      As EU law currently stands, the delimitation between the jurisdiction of the General Court and the Civil Service Tribunal is based on the personal status of the applicant and on the origin of the dispute. In accordance with consistent case-law, where a dispute between an official and the institution by which he is or was employed originates in the employment relationship between the person concerned and the institution, it falls under Article 270 TFEU and Articles 90 and 91 of the Staff Regulations and therefore lies outside the scope of Articles 268 TFEU and 340 TFEU, which govern the general system of extra-contractual liability of the Union.

In a dispute between the relatives of a deceased official and the institution by which he was employed, where those relatives bring an action in order to obtain reparation for damage which is personal to them, whether that damage is material or non-material, the subjective personal condition, linked to the status of official enjoying the rights in question, is lacking and the Civil Service Tribunal therefore, in principle, lacks jurisdiction ratione personae to hear and determine the dispute under Article 270 TFEU and Articles 90 and 91 of the Staff Regulations. In those circumstances, where the relatives claim compensation for various losses caused by a single act, they are necessarily required to bring two actions, one before the Civil Service Tribunal and the other before the General Court, depending on whether they have succeeded to the rights of the official in question or whether they claim reparation for material or non-material damage that is personal to them, those two actions for compensation being subject to different conditions on the substance.

However, having regard to considerations of legal certainty, sound administration of justice, economy of procedure and the prevention of contradictory court decisions, it is permissible for those relatives to join their applications and form a single action. That single action must be brought before the General Court, which is not only the ‘general’ or ‘general law’ court, having ‘unlimited jurisdiction’ in that respect, unlike the Civil Service Tribunal, which is the specialised court, but also the higher court, to which the Civil Service Tribunal is ‘attached’, in the words of Article 257 TFEU. In application of the second subparagraph of Article 8(3) of Annex I to the Statute of the Court of Justice, the Civil Service Tribunal should immediately decline jurisdiction so that the General Court may act on those cases.

(see paras 47, 51, 65, 66, 73-75)

2.      In the system of remedies provided for in Articles 90 and 91 of the Staff Regulations, a claim for compensation raised for the first time before the General Court, although the prior administrative complaint sought only annulment of the allegedly harmful decision, is admissible, since an application for annulment may entail a claim for reparation for the loss suffered. Likewise, in order to be admissible before the General Court, a claim for default interest in the event of the annulment of the contested decision does not need to have been expressly mentioned in the prior administrative complaint. That case-law is not specific to annulment proceedings and it cannot be concluded that it would not be applicable to a dispute relating solely to damages.

(see paras 92-94)