Keywords
Summary

Keywords

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1. Measures adopted by the Community institutions - Individual decision - Notification - Concept

(EEC Treaty, Art. 191, second para.)

2. Procedure - Time-limit for initiating proceedings - Time bar - Excusable error - Concept

3. Procedure - Time-limit for initiating proceedings - Time bar - Unforeseeable circumstances or force majeure - Concept

(Statute of the Court of Justice of the EEC, Art. 42, para. 2)

Summary

1. A decision is duly notified once it has been communicated to the person to whom it is addressed and that person is in a position to take cognizance of it. Where notification is effected by registered letter with postal acknowledgment of receipt, the date on which that acknowledgment is signed is to be regarded as the date of notification, without there being any need to have regard to the date on which the addressee returned an ordinary acknowledgment of receipt form inserted with the decision in order to minimize the effect of any omission on the part of the postal services.

2. Since the Community rules concerning time-limits for initiating proceedings are a matter of public policy, the concept of excusable error allowing a derogation form those rules pursuant to the principles of legal certainty and the protection of legitimate expectations must be strictly construed and can concern only exceptional circumstances in which, in particular, the conduct of the institution concerned has been, either alone or to a decisive extent, such as to give rise to a pardonable confusion in the mind of a party acting in good faith and exercising all the diligence required of a normally experienced trader.

3. For an applicant whose action is time-barred to avoid the effects of that bar, as provided for in the second paragraph of Article 42 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the EEC, by reason of the existence of unforeseeable circumstances or force majeure, there must be abnormal difficulties, independent of the will of the person concerned and apparently inevitable, even if all due care is taken.