22.12.2014

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 462/30

(Case T-744/14)

(2014/C 462/43)

Language of the case: Italian

Parties

Applicant: Meta Group Srl (Rome, Italy) (represented by: A. Bartolini and A. Formica, lawyers)

Defendant: European Commission

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:

—find that the Commission has failed to fulfil its financial obligations arising from the grant contracts mentioned below, totalling EUR 566 377,63, in respect of contributions due but unpaid, and also declare illegal the offset carried out in respect of the applicant’s claims;

—consequently, order the Commission to pay the applicant that sum of EUR 566 377,63, together with default interest and reflecting monetary revaluation;

—furthermore, order the Commission to pay compensation for damage caused to the applicant, in the amount of EUR 815 000 in total, or more should the Court deem it appropriate at the conclusion of the present proceedings, and also in respect of the serious loss resulting from the unlawfulness of the abovementioned offset.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The subject-matter of the present action concerns the Commission’s alleged breach of the contracts Take It Up (No 245637), BCreative (No 245599) and Ecolink+ (No 256224), concluded in the framework of the ‘Fifth and Sixth European Union Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development’.

In support of its application, the applicant puts forward 10 pleas in law.

1.First plea: failure by the Commission to comply with the contractual terms in determining the hourly cost of the contracted service providers (infringement of Article II.19.1(d) of Annex II to the grant contracts).

—In determining the hourly cost of the contracted service providers, the Commission acted in breach of Article II.19.1(d) of Annex II, under which the costs of the contracted service providers, as professionals providing their services for the implementation of the project in receipt of subsidies, within the terms of the contracts concluded inter partes, must be determined in accordance with the [accounting] standards of the Member State in which the beneficiary carries on its activities.

2.Second plea: failure by the Commission to comply with the contractual terms in determining the hourly cost of the contracted service providers (infringement of Article II.19.1(b) of Annex II to the grant contracts).

—In determining the hourly cost of the contracted service providers, the Commission also acted in breach of Article II.19.1(b) to the grant contracts, under which the eligible costs must be determined in accordance with the general [accounting] standards in force when the contract was signed. In particular, the reference made by the Commission to the parameters specified for the ‘Marie Curie’ programmes is wholly inappropriate and arbitrary, since those parameters relate to rules which did not come into force until 2011 and which, in addition, apply exclusively to the FP7 (the Seventh EU Framework Programme), and which, in consequence, were not in force, as such, at the material time for the purposes of the present dispute.

3.Third plea: failure by the Commission to comply with Article I.11 (‘Other Special Conditions’) of the grant contract for the Take it up project.

—With specific regard to the CIP programme contracts and, in particular, the contract relating to the Take it up project, the Commission infringed Article I.11, given that it consistently failed to take any formal or implied decision rejecting the methodology proposed by META for the implementation of that contractual term.

4.Fourth plea: failure by the Commission to comply with Article II.19.1(b) of Annex II to the grant contracts by classifying as a ‘subcontract’ the employment relationship of the experts who worked with the applicant company.

—The Commission acted in further breach of Article II.19.1(b) in so far as it failed, wrongly, to apply, in the case of the experts employed by META to implement the projects in receipt of subsidies, the criteria and accounting standards for ‘intra muros consultants’, in accordance with the definition provided by the Commission itself in the Financial Guidelines of the Fifth and Sixth Framework Programme.

5.Fifth plea: failure by the Commission to comply with Article II.19.1(b) of Annex II to the grant contracts as regards the recognition of indirect costs relating to the ‘in house consultants’.

—The Commission acted in further breach of Article II.19.1(b) of Annex II, specifically as regards the application of the general accounting standards referred to in that provision, since it failed to respect the general standards applying to the classification of the indirect costs relating to the ‘in house consultants’.

6.Sixth plea: infringement by the Commission of the rules and principles of EU law and the case-law of the Court of Justice and, in particular, breach of the principles of good faith, protection of legitimate expectations and legal certainty.

—The Commission’s inaction was liable to give rise to a legitimate expectation, on the part of the applicant, as to the correctness of the methodology proposed, so that subsequent acts of recovery/deduction of contributions due should be considered to have been adopted in breach of the principle of good faith in performing the contract.

7.Seventh plea: infringement by the Commission of the rules set out in the Code of good administrative behaviour and, in particular, of the rules relating to proportionality, the right to information, the right to be heard and the duty to provide reasons for a decision.

—The Commission failed to provide META with the requested information or an adequate explanation of decisions taken, and, in any event, adopted a disproportionate decision, given that all the objectives of the project were achieved on time by the applicant.

8.Eighth plea: failure by the Commission to discharge its obligation to pay META the contributions provided for under the grant contracts for carrying out the projects financed.

—The Commission was therefore in breach of the contractual obligation concerning the payment of the contributions due, under the grant contracts, in respect of META’s activity (in respect of which accounts were drawn up) for achieving the objectives set for the projects. Those unpaid contributions amounted to EUR 566 377,63.

9.Ninth plea: infringement by the Commission of Article 80 of Regulation (EU) No 966/2012 concerning the offset carried out in relation to META’s claims.

—The Commission acted in breach of the rule laid down in Article 80 of Regulation No 966/2012, which permits the offsetting of debts owed to the European institutions against the claims against those institutions only where those debts and claims are of a fixed amount, certain and due. Since the claims offset by the Commission are contested, they lack the requisite ‘certainty’.

10.

Tenth plea: concerning compensation for the financial loss suffered by the applicant.

The Commission’s breach of its contractual obligations resulted, moreover, in particularly serious and unfair harm to META, in the form of actual loss, amounting, on the basis of a report appended to the application, to EUR 8 15 000, in addition to the harm resulting from the offset unlawfully carried out by the Commission.