(Pension – Attachment order on salary – Enforcement of a judgment of a national court)

Full text in French II - 0000

Application: first, for annulment of the Commission’s decision to proceed with an attachment order on the applicant’s pension following a judgment by an Italian court ordering the applicant to pay the fees of a doctor appointed by him to represent him before the disability committee and the medical committee and, second, for reimbursement of certain expenses and fees and payment of damages.

Held: The action is dismissed. Each party is ordered to bear its own costs.

Summary

1. Officials – Actions – Time-limits – Withdrawal following amicable settlement – Subsequent bringing of a fresh action with essentially the same subject-matter and based on the same facts and cause of action – Time-barred – Exception – New fact – Meaning

(Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91)

(Protocol on the Privileges and Immunities of the European Communities, Art. 1; Staff Regulations, Art. 23(1))

1.Where an applicant who has brought an action against the rejection of a request for payment made to the administration withdraws his action following an amicable settlement of the dispute, in accordance with Article 98(1) of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, in which he abandons part of his claims, the decision to reject his complaint also becomes final and precludes the initiation of fresh proceedings, in which the same facts and the same cause of action are relied on, in order to obtain a higher sum than agreed in the amicable settlement.

Although the existence of a substantial new fact can justify a request for reconsideration of a decision which has become final, an applicant may not rely in that connection on the fact that the third party, whose financial claims against him were the cause of the request for payment which he himself made to the institution, refuses to restrict those claims to the amount decided in the arrangement to which he was not party, since the applicant must have been aware of the possibility of such a refusal when he negotiated with the administration.

(see paras 65-66, 70)

See: 153/85 Trenti v ESC [1986] ECR 2427, paras 11 to 16; T-165/97 Gómez de la Cruz Talegón v Commission [2000] ECR-SC I-A-19 and II-79, para. 46 et seq.; T-186/98 Inpesca v Commission [2001] ECR II-557, para. 49; T-68/98 Jung v Commission [2002] ECR-SC I-A-55 and II-251, paras 38, 39, 41 and 43; T‑112/02 Van Dyck v Commission [2002] ECR-SC I-A-317 and II-1527, paras 60, 62 and 64

2.In private legal relationships with other private individuals Community officials are, in accordance with the first paragraph of Article 23 of the Staff Regulations, fully subject to the applicable national law, notwithstanding certain privileges and immunities under the Protocol on the Privileges and Immunities of the European Communities.

In view of the protective purpose of the protocol, it is only where a Community institution on which a third party intends to serve an attachment order on the pension of a former official raises objections based on the allegation that the order would interfere with the functioning and independence of the Communities that the creditor concerned must apply to the Court of Justice for authorisation to serve that attachment order in accordance with Article 1 of that protocol.

(see paras 73, 75)

See: 1/71 SA [1971] ECR 363, para. 7; 1/87 SA Universe Tankship v Commission [1987] ECR 2807, para. 5; T-497/93 Hogan v Court of Justice [1995] ECR II-703, paras 38, 49 and 60