(Officials – Resettlement allowance – Definition of residence – Evidence)

Full text in French II - 0000

Application: for annulment of the decision of the European Parliament of 3 June 2002 refusing to grant the applicant a resettlement allowance.

Held: The application is dismissed. The parties are ordered to bear their own costs.

Summary

1. Officials – Actions – Subject-matter – Directions issued to the administration – Inadmissibility

(Staff Regulations, Art. 91)

(Staff Regulations, Art. 91)

(Staff Regulations, Annex VII, Art. 6)

1. The Court may not issue directions to the Community institutions or assume the role assigned to them. Thus a claim by a former official for an institution to be ordered to grant him a resettlement allowance must be declared inadmissible.

(see paras 20, 22)

See: C-5/93 P DSM v Commission [1999] ECR I-4695, para. 36; T-145/98 ADT Projekt v Commission [2000] ECR II-387, para. 83

(see para. 28)

See: C-449/98 P IECC v Commission [2001] ECR I-3875, para. 87; T-19/90 Von Hoessle v Court of Auditors [1991] ECR II‑615, para. 30

The concept of habitual residence must be interpreted as meaning the place where the person concerned has established, and intends to maintain, the permanent or habitual centre of his or her interests. In addition, the concept of residence, whilst not based on a purely quantitative factor, namely the length of time spent by the person in a particular country, does nevertheless involve, apart from the actual fact of living in a given place, the intention of thereby achieving the continuity which stems from a stable way of life and from the course of normal social relations, so that the renting of an apartment is not sufficient evidence of the actual transfer of the habitual residence.

It is for the official to show, by any legally permissible means, that he actually changed his place of residence in the three years following the termination of his service, though it is pointed out that the evidence that resettlement actually took place within that period may be provided after it has expired. However, that evidence is relevant only in so far as it proves that the official actually changed his place of residence in the three years following the termination of his service.

(see paras 41-43, 48)

See: T‑57/92 and T-75/92 Yorck von Wartenburg v Parliament [1993] ECR II‑925, paras 65 and 66; T-37/99 Miranda v Commission [2001] ECR-SC I-A-87 and II-413, paras 30, 31 and 32