Case C-390/17 P: Appeal brought on 28 June 2017 by Irit Azoulay, Andrew Boreham, Mirja Bouchard and Darren Neville against the judgment of the General Court (Eighth Chamber) delivered on 28 April 2017 in Case T-580/16, Azoulay and Others v European Parliament

Appeal brought on 28 June 2017 by Irit Azoulay, Andrew Boreham, Mirja Bouchard and Darren Neville against the judgment of the General Court (Eighth Chamber) delivered on 28 April 2017 in Case T-580/16, Azoulay and Others v European Parliament

(Case C-390/17 P)

Parties

Appellants: Irit Azoulay, Andrew Boreham, Mirja Bouchard and Darren Neville (represented by: M. Casado García-Hirschfeld, avocat)

Other party to the proceedings: European Parliament

Form of order sought

The appellants claim that the Court should:

Grounds of appeal and main arguments

The appellants are of the opinion that the judgment under appeal is vitiated by several errors of law and a distortion of the facts.

The General Court erred in law and distorted the facts by rejecting an autonomous and uniform interpretation of the concept of education costs within the EU legal order and by making that concept dependent on the meaning attributed to it in the various education systems of the countries of residence of an official, irrespective of the nature of the costs and the interests of the children.

According to the case-law of the Court of Justice, it follows, both from the uniform application of EU law and from the principle of equality, that the terms of a provision of EU law that makes no express reference to the law of the Member States for the purpose of determining its meaning and scope must normally be given an autonomous and uniform interpretation throughout the European Union, which must take into account the context of the provision and the objective pursued by the legislation in question (judgment of 15 October 2015, Axa Belgium, C–494/14, EU:C:2015:692).

In addition, the General Court’s finding in paragraph 47 of the judgment under appeal is incoherent and misconstrues the case-law concerning the rule of correspondence between the prior administrative complaint and the action.

The appellants also submit that the General Court did not comply with its obligation to state reasons by failing to rule on the infringement of the principle of equal treatment and of Article 22 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which had nonetheless been put forward before it.

Consequently, according to the appellants, by examining their three separate heads of claims in a manner that was overly perfunctory, the General Court arrived at findings that are substantiated neither in law nor in fact.