ORDER OF THE GENERAL COURT (Appeal Chamber)

10 September 2013

Case T‑199/11 P-REV

Guido Strack

v

European Commission

(Procedure — Application for revision — No new fact — Inadmissibility)

Application:      for revision of the judgment of the General Court of 13 December 2012 in Case T‑199/11 P Strack v Commission [2012] ECR-SC.

Held:      The application for revision is dismissed as manifestly inadmissible. Mr Guido Strack is to bear his own costs and is ordered to pay the costs incurred by the European Commission.

Summary

1.      Judicial proceedings — Revision of a judgment — Conditions for the admissibility of the application — New fact — Concept — Fact known before delivery of the judgment — Not included — Inadmissibility

(Statute of the Court of Justice, Arts 44, first para., and 53, first para.)

2.      Judicial proceedings — Costs — Unreasonable or vexatious costs imposed on an institution by a former official’s inadmissible application for revision

(Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Art. 87(3), second para.)

1.      Under the first paragraph of Article 44 of the Statute of the Court of Justice, applicable to proceedings before the General Court pursuant to the first paragraph of Article 53 of that Statute, an application for revision of a judgment may be made only on discovery of one or more facts which are of such a nature as to be decisive factors, and which, when the judgment was given, were unknown to the court hearing the application and to the party claiming the revision. Under the second paragraph of that article, it is only where the court finds that a new fact exists, recognises that it is of such a character as to lay the case open to revision and declares the application admissible on that ground that it can examine the substance of the case.

Consequently, revision is not an appeal procedure but an exceptional review procedure that allows the authority of res judicata attaching to a final judgment to be called in question on the basis of the findings of fact relied upon by the court. Revision presupposes the discovery of elements of a factual nature which existed prior to the judgment and which were unknown at that time to the court which delivered it as well as to the party applying for revision and which, had the court been able to take them into consideration, could have led it to a different determination of the proceedings. Moreover, in the light of the exceptional nature of the revision procedure, the conditions governing the admissibility of an application for revision of a judgment are to be interpreted strictly.

An application for revision in support of which is put forward a fact known to the applicant for revision before the judgment was pronounced is therefore manifestly inadmissible.

(see paras 11, 12, 22)

See:

16 April 2012, T‑40/07 P-REV and T‑62/07 P-REV de Brito Sequeira Carvalho v Commission, not published in the ECR, para. 12 and the case-law cited therein

2.      See the text of the decision.

(see paras 23-24)