Avis juridique important

61989A0033

European Court reports 1993 Page II-00249

Summary

Keywords

2. Officials ° Actions ° Prior complaint through official channels ° Time-limits ° Complaint submitted within the time-limit to a non-competent department on the basis of information provided by that department ° Excusable error ° Effects ° Prolongation of the time-limit for initiating proceedings (Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91)

5. Procedure ° Originating application ° Formal requirements ° Brief statement of grounds on which application is based (Statute of the Court of Justice of the EEC, Art. 19; Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, Art. 38(1))

Summary

2. A failure to comply with time-limits laid down in Article 90(2) of the Staff Regulations does not prevent a prior complaint through official channels or an application against the rejection of that complaint from being admissible where the applicant has been in excusable error. The concept of excusable error, in the context of time-limits for initiating proceedings, which are a matter of public policy and not subject to the discretion either of the court or of the parties, 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 pardonable confusion in the mind of a party acting in good faith and exercising all the diligence required of a normally experienced person. In such an event, the administration may not rely on its own failure to observe the principles of legal certainty and the protection of legitimate expectations out of which the error arose. It constitutes an excusable error, of such a kind as to prolong the time-limit for initiating proceedings, where a complaint is lodged within the time-limit laid down in the Staff Regulations with a non-competent department on the basis of incorrect information provided by that department, which merely returned the complaint to the official concerned without forwarding it to the department actually competent, which therefore received it out of time.

5. The application initiating proceedings must contain a brief statement of the grounds on which it is based. This means that the application must specify the nature of the grounds on which it is based, so that a mere abstract statement does not alone satisfy the requirements of the Statute of the Court of Justice or the Rules of Procedure. A ground which has not been briefly set out in the application cannot, in the light of the prohibition on producing fresh issues in the course of the proceedings, be specified in the reply.