Action brought on 3 November 2005 — ARCHI.M.E.D.-E.S v Commission

(Case T-397/05)

(2006/C 74/41)

Language of the case: French

Parties

Applicant: Architecture, Microclimat, Energies Douces — Europe et Sud SARL (ARCHI.M.E.D.-E.S) (Ganges, France) (represented by: P.-P. van Gehuchten, J. Sambon, P. Reyniers, lawyers)

Defendant: Commission of the European Communities

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:

Pleas in law and main arguments

The applicant is party to Contract BU 209-95 concluded with the Commission in consequence of the invitation to tender in connection with the specific programme for research and technological development in the field of non-nuclear energy (1) and covering the execution of a project of renovation of a building in Lyon by using solar and bio-climatic architecture methods. The contract contains an arbitration clause under which the Community judicature has exclusive jurisdiction over disputes between the contracting parties as regards the validity, application and interpretation of the contract.

In execution of its contractual obligations, the applicant, on 12 December 2001, sent the Commission the final report on the project. The Commission did not accept that report and on 5 July 2002 served on the applicant a decision to recover payments made by refusing to accept certain costs declared by it in that report. Neither exchanges of correspondence between the parties, nor the meetings held, nor the intervention of a mediator could bring about an amicable settlement of the dispute. By registered letter of 30 August 2005, the Commission served the applicant with a final recovery decision preceded by a debit note of 23 August 2005. That decision is the subject of this action brought by the applicant on the basis of the arbitration clause.

The action seeks, principally, an order that the Commission pay 20 % of the balance of the subsidy allegedly due to the applicant under Contract BU 209-95.

In support of its claims, the applicant argues that any disagreement with the way the project was executed by the contracting parties should have been expressed by the Commission before the date on which the report was presumed to have been approved (two months from the date of deposit of the final report). In the applicant's view, the Commission is time-barred and cannot therefore constitute itself a creditor of the applicant. Consequently, being time-barred, the Commission remains indebted to the applicant for the balance of the subsidy which it undertook to pay under the contract in question.

(1)  Programme put in place by Council Decision 94/806/EC of 23 November 1994 (OJ L 334 of 22 December 1994, p. 87).