Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1. Appeals - Pleas in law - Review by the Court of Justice of the assessment of evidence - Excluded unless the sense of evidence has been distorted - Inadmissible

(Art. 225 EC; EC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51)

2. Officials - Actions - Prior administrative complaint - Requirement that subject-matter and grounds be the same - Pleas in law and arguments not appearing in the complaint, but closely linked to it - Admissible

(Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91)

3. Officials - Actions - Prior administrative complaint - Fresh claim for compensation distinct from that claimed in complaint - Inadmissible

(Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91)

Summary

1. As regards a claim for compensation for damage, it is for the Court of First Instance alone, by virtue of Article 225 EC and Article 51 of the Statute of the Court of Justice, to assess the existence of the damage and the causal link between that damage and the facts giving rise to it, save where the clear sense of the evidence has been distorted. When the Court of First Instance has made use, without distorting it, of all the available evidence, evidence that is moreover consistent, the part of the ground of appeal requesting the Court to substitute its own assessment of the evidence for that of the Court of First Instance must be declared inadmissible under those provisions.

( see para. 24 )

2. In actions brought by officials, although the relief sought in the application to the Court must be the same as that set out in the complaint, and although the application may only contain heads of claim based on the same legal basis as that relied on in the complaint, those heads of claim may, in the non-contentious stage of the procedure, be developed by the submission of pleas and arguments not necessarily appearing in the complaint but which are closely linked to it.

( see para. 34 )

3. The substance of the complaint is not intended to be strictly and definitively binding for the purposes of the contentious stage of the procedure, provided always that neither the legal basis nor the subject-matter of the complaint is changed in the action brought. Thus, where the applicant asks in his complaint for the annulment of the implied decision rejecting his request for assistance, he must be regarded as having asked for compensation for the damage which may have been caused to him by that decision. On the other hand, when he brings a new claim for compensation based on a new head of damage arising from measures of reprisal taken against him following the lodging of his complaint, and those reprisals are not the result of the Commission's implied decision rejecting his request for assistance, it is a claim for compensation different from that contained in the complaint, and must be regarded as a new claim which, as such, is inadmissible.

( see paras 35, 37-38 )