ORDER OF THE GENERAL COURT (Appeal Chamber)

10 February 2012

Case T‑98/11 P

AG

v

European Parliament

(Appeal — Civil service — Officials — Dismissal at the end of the probationary period — Time-limit for bringing action — Delay — Appeal clearly unfounded)

Appeal:      against the order of the Civil Service Tribunal of the European Union (First Chamber) of 16 December 2010 in Case F‑25/10 AG v Parliament [2010] ECR-SC, seeking to have that order set aside.

Held:      The appeal as dismissed as clearly unfounded. AG is ordered to pay, apart from her own costs, the costs incurred by the European Parliament.

Summary

1.      Appeals — Grounds — Error of law relied on not identified — Inadmissibility

(Art. 257 TFEU; EC Statute of the Court of Justice, Annex I, Art. 11(1); Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Art. 138(1)(c))

2.      Appeals — Grounds — Mistaken assessment of the facts — Inadmissibility — Review by the Court of the assessment of the evidence — Possible only where the clear sense of the evidence has been distorted

(Statute of the Court of Justice, Annex I, Art. 11)

1.      It follows from Article 257 TFEU, the first paragraph of Article 11 of Annex I to the EC Statute of the Court of Justice, and Article 138(1)(c) of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court that an appeal must indicate precisely the contested elements of the judgment which the appellant seeks to have set aside and also the legal arguments specifically advanced in support of the appeal. That requirement is not satisfied by an appeal which does not include any argument specifically identifying the error of law allegedly vitiating the judgment or order in question.

Statements which are too general and imprecise to be legally assessed must be regarded as manifestly inadmissible.

(see paras 24, 25)

See:

16 December 2010, T‑48/10 P Meister v OHIM [2010] ECR-SC, paras 42 and 43 and the case-law cited

2.      It follows from Article 11 of Annex I to the Statute of the Court of Justice, which adopts the wording of Article 58 of that statute, that an appeal is limited to points of law and lies only on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction of the Civil Service Tribunal, a breach of procedure before it which adversely affects the interests of the appellant, or infringement of Union law by the Tribunal.

The Civil Service Tribunal accordingly has exclusive jurisdiction to find the facts, except where the substantive inaccuracy of its findings is apparent from the documents submitted to it, and to assess those facts. The assessment of the facts does not, therefore, except in the case of distortion of the evidence submitted to the Civil Service Tribunal, constitute a question of law which is subject as such to review by the appeal court.

Such distortion must be obvious from the documents in the Court’s file, without there being any need to carry out a new assessment of the facts and the evidence, still less to take new evidence into account.

(see paras 44-46)

See:

24 October 2011, T‑213/10 P P v Parliament [2010] ECR-SC, paras 46 to 48 and the case-law cited