ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE FIRST CHAMBER OF THE CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

29 September 2009

Case F-18/05 RENV

D

v

Commission of the European Communities

(Civil service – Officials – Referral back after setting aside – Occupational disease – Request for recognition that the aggravation of the disease from which the applicant is suffering is of occupational origin – Article 73 of the Staff Regulations – Removal from the register – Costs)

Application: brought under Articles 236 EC and 152 EA, in which D seeks annulment of the Commission’s decision of 4 May 2004 rejecting his request for recognition that the disease or the aggravation of the disease from which he is suffering and which is preventing him from filling a post in his category corresponding to his grade is of occupational origin.

Held: Case F-18/05 RENV D v Commission is removed from the register of the Tribunal. The Commission is to pay, in addition to all its own costs relating to the proceedings before the Tribunal and the Court of First Instance, half of the costs incurred by the applicant relating to those proceedings. The applicant is ordered to bear half of his own costs relating to the proceedings before the Tribunal and the Court of First Instance. Axa Belgium, intervener for the Commission, is to bear its own costs.

Summary

Procedure – Costs – Withdrawal justified by the conduct of the opposite party

(Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, Art. 87(5); Rules of Procedure of the Civil Service Tribunal, Art. 122)

Under Article 87(5) of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, applicable mutatis mutandis to cases pending before the Civil Service Tribunal prior to the entry into force of its own Rules of Procedure, a party who discontinues or withdraws from proceedings is to be ordered to pay the costs if they have been applied for in the observations of the other party on the discontinuance. However, upon application by a party who discontinues or withdraws from proceedings, the costs are to be borne by the other party if this appears justified by the conduct of that party.

However, costs must be shared in the case of a withdrawal following a decision by an institution to review, after four years, its refusal to recognise the occupational origin of a disease against which the person concerned has brought proceedings, where the withdrawal was submitted only three working days prior to the hearing and almost a year after that decision, and where the institution has been successful in a decision on appeal in the same case.

(see paras 10-14)