ORDER OF THE GENERAL COURT (Appeal Chamber)

27 November 2013

Case T‑203/13 P

Luigi Marcuccio

v

European Commission

(Appeals — Civil service — Action dismissed at first instance as manifestly inadmissible — Application lodged by fax within the period prescribed for bringing an action and signed by means of a stamp reproducing the lawyer’s signature — Original application lodged out of time — Action out of time — Appeal manifestly unfounded)

Appeal:      against the order of the Civil Service Tribunal of the European Union (Second Chamber) of 28 January 2013 in Case F‑92/12 Marcuccio v Commission [2013] ECR-SC, seeking to have that order set aside.

Held:      The appeal is dismissed. Mr Luigi Marcuccio is to bear his own costs and is ordered to pay the costs incurred by the European Commission in the appeal proceedings.

Summary

Judicial proceedings — Application initiating proceedings — Formal requirements — Lawyer’s handwritten signature — Substantive rule of strict application — Application lodged by fax — Lawyer’s signature placed on the document by means of a stamp — Handwritten signature different from that on the original application sent by post — Date of receipt of fax not to be taken into account for assessing whether the time-limit for bringing proceedings has been met

(Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 21)

As regards the relationship between the signature of the lawyer representing an applicant in an application sent by fax and the signature appended to the original application lodged no later than ten days thereafter, where the signature at the bottom of the faxed application is not the same as the signature on the original application lodged subsequently, the faxed application cannot be taken into account for the purpose of assessing whether the time-limit for bringing proceedings has been met. Furthermore, the fact of appending, on an application initiating proceedings, a stamp reproducing the signature of the lawyer instructed by the applicant is an indirect and mechanical way of ‘signing’ which does not by itself support the finding that it is necessarily the lawyer himself who signed the procedural document in question. The requirement for a handwritten signature on the application, which is intended, with the object of legal certainty, to ensure the authenticity of the application and to exclude the risk that the application is not in reality the work of the duly authorised person, must be considered to be an essential procedural rule and to be of strict application, so that failure to comply therewith renders the action inadmissible.

It follows that, where the signature on a faxed document, whether a stamped signature or a handwritten signature, does not correspond to the signature on the original application lodged subsequently, that discrepancy results in the same legal consequences, that is to say, the faxed document cannot be taken into account for the purpose of assessing whether the time-limit for bringing proceedings has been met.

(see paras 13-15, 17)

See:

T‑223/06 P Parliament v Eistrup [2007] ECR II‑1581, paras 50 to 52; 29 November 2011, T‑345/11 ENISA v EDPS, not published in the ECR, paras 15 to 17; 3 October 2012, T‑360/10 Tecnimed v OHIM — Ecobrands (ZAPPER-CLICK), not published in the ECR, paras 15 to 17 and the case-law cited therein