ORDER OF THE GENERAL COURT (Fourth Chamber)
7 September 2021 (*)
(Procedure – Taxation of costs)
In Case T‑163/20 DEP,
Isopix SA, established in Ixelles (Belgium), represented by P. van den Bulck, lawyer,
applicant,
v
European Parliament, represented by K. Wójcik and E. Taneva, acting as Agents,
defendant,
APPLICATION for taxation of costs following the order of 29 October 2020, Isopix v Parliament (T‑163/20, not published, EU:T:2020:527),
THE GENERAL COURT (Fourth Chamber),
composed of S. Gervasoni, President, L. Madise and J. Martín y Pérez de Nanclares (Rapporteur), Judges,
Registrar: E. Coulon,
makes the following
Order (1)
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Law
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Amount of recoverable lawyers’ fees
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40 In the fourth place, it should be noted that the importance of the dispute from the point of view of EU law was limited since the main proceedings (T‑163/20) and the proceedings for interim measures (T‑163/20 R and T‑163/20 R II) did not raise novel or particularly complex questions. Nor did their examination reveal anything of significance with respect to the development of EU law. In that regard, contrary to the applicant’s submission, the fact that it is unusual for the President of the General Court to decide on the suspension of the operation of a measure adopted by an EU institution cannot, in itself, be indicative of the fact that the case has particular significance from the point of view of EU law.
41 Furthermore, the applicant’s argument relating to the difficulty of the case resulting from the unusual nature of the decisions of the President of the General Court suspending the operation of the first and second contested measures must be rejected. As the Parliament rightly points out, the allegedly unusual nature of such decisions means only that the chance of obtaining the suspension of the operation of a measure adopted by an EU institution is lower than that of having an application for suspension rejected; nevertheless, this does not necessarily cause difficulties for the applicant’s lawyers in terms of the amount of work or the complexity of the legal issues raised in Cases T‑163/20, T‑163/20 R and T‑163/20 R II. In that regard, it must be stated that the order of 25 May 2020, Isopix v Parliament (T‑163/20 R and T‑163/20 R II, not published, EU:T:2020:215), determined on the basis of settled-case-law whether, in the particular circumstances of the case, the applications for interim measures submitted by the applicant should be granted. Consequently, the analysis of the conditions for granting the applicant’s applications for interim measures was more concerned with matters of fact than with matters of law, with the result that the contribution to the development of EU law remained limited.
42 The same applies to the applicant’s argument that the difficulty of the case arises from the short time limits within which its lawyers had to work. Even if it were accepted that the applicant’s lawyers had to work within tight time limits, that cannot have an impact on the amount of their work or on the complexity of the legal issues raised.
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Courier costs
59 According to the applicant, the amount of EUR 352.48 should be added to the lawyers’ fees, to cover the cost of sending to the Registry of the General Court the documents which were required to open an e-Curia account urgently in order to submit, inter alia, an application for interim measures. In support of that argument, the applicant produced an invoice issued by a courier service company on 31 March 2020, that is to say, two days before the initiating application in Case T‑163/20 and the application for interim measures in Case T‑163/20 R were lodged.
60 The Parliament does not accept that these are expenses that were necessarily incurred and are, therefore, repayable.
61 It should be noted, as observed by the Parliament, that the opening of an e-Curia account is subject to, inter alia, the professional status of agents and lawyers authorised to practise before a court of a Member State or of another State which is a party to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. An e-Curia account is opened in the name of the lawyer requesting it and is used for any case, present or future, brought before the Court of Justice of the European Union.
62 Furthermore, it must be stated, in any event, that the applicant could have sent the documents necessary to complete the opening of its e-Curia account to the Registry of the General Court after the documents referred to in paragraph 59 above had been lodged. The conditions of use of the e-Curia application, adopted by the Registry of the General Court on the basis, in particular, of Article 8 of the Decision of the General Court of 11 July 2018 on the lodging and service of procedural documents by means of e-Curia (OJ 2018 L 240, p. 72), provide for a special procedure which enables an account on e-Curia to be opened provisionally in order for the procedural documents to be lodged with the General Court. Thus, where a representative who fulfils the conditions for opening an account has not taken the requisite steps to open it in good time before the expiry of the time limit for lodging a procedural document with the General Court, it is possible for that representative to open an account on a provisional basis in order to lodge that document under the special procedure. In that regard, in order for the creation of that account to be validated by the Registry of the General Court, the representative must send it the documents required in order to complete the creation of the account within 10 days of the date on which the procedural document was lodged via e-Curia.
63 For these reasons, the courier costs incurred by the applicant in the present case cannot be considered to have been necessarily incurred for the purposes of the main proceedings in Case T‑163/20 and the proceedings for interim measures in Case T‑163/20 R, within the meaning of Article 140(b) of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court.
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On those grounds,
THE GENERAL COURT (Fourth Chamber)
hereby orders:
The total amount of costs which the European Parliament is to pay to Isopix SA is fixed at EUR 25 490.
Luxembourg, 7 September 2021.