L_2012260EN.01000601.xml
| 27.9.2012 | EN | Official Journal of the European Union | L 260/6 |
PRACTICE DIRECTIONS TO PARTIES ON JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS BEFORE THE EUROPEAN UNION CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL
of 11 July 2012
Table of Contents
| II. | GENERAL PROVISIONS RELATING TO THE LODGING AND SERVICE OF PROCEDURAL DOCUMENTS |
| A. | Electronic transmission by means of e-Curia |
| B. | Transmission in paper format |
| 1. | Lodging the application |
| 2. | Mandatory information and rules on presentation of the application |
| 3. | Putting the application in order |
| B. | Defence and other procedural documents relating to the written procedure |
| C. | Sending an original paper document preceded by a fax |
| D. | Applications for confidential treatment |
| E. | Applications for legal aid |
| B. | Preparation for the hearing |
| C. | Conduct of the hearing |
| D. | Specific features of simultaneous interpretation |
| V. | ENTRY INTO FORCE OF THESE DIRECTIONS |
THE EUROPEAN UNION CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL,
having regard to Article 120 of its Rules of Procedure;
Whereas:
it is in the interests of the proper administration of justice that practice directions be issued to the parties’ representatives, dealing with the manner in which procedural documents are to be submitted so as to ensure the efficient conduct of the hearing;
compliance with these directions reduces the number of requests for regularisation and the risk of inadmissibility as a result of failure to comply with the rules as to form;
proceedings before the Civil Service Tribunal are subject to language arrangements appropriate to a multilingual Union;
it is in the interests of the parties to proceedings before the Civil Service Tribunal that the Tribunal provide concise responses to matters on which the parties’ representatives wish to be better informed, and provide guidance to enable them to draft their procedural documents appropriately;
it is in the interests of the efficient conduct of proceedings before the Civil Service Tribunal that practice directions be given to persons concerned regarding the submission of applications for legal aid and the conduct of the oral procedure;
HEREBY DECIDES TO ADOPT THE FOLLOWING PRACTICE DIRECTIONS:
I. INTERPRETATION
| 1. | The definitions adopted in Article 1 of the Rules of Procedure shall apply equally for the purposes of these Practice Directions. |
II. GENERAL PROVISIONS RELATING TO THE LODGING AND SERVICE OF PROCEDURAL DOCUMENTS
| 2. | The lodging and service (transmission) of procedural documents between the parties and the Tribunal may be effected:
| — | by exclusively electronic means using the e-Curia application, or |
| — | by dispatch in paper format. | |
A. Electronic transmission by means of e-Curia
| 3. | Electronic transmission by means of e-Curia is characterised by:
| (a) | the creation of a personal access account to which a party’s representative may have access using a username and secure password; |
| (b) | the fact that no procedural documents or annexes thereto are sent by the parties in paper format; a document shall be deemed to be the original if it is received at the Tribunal by means of e-Curia, and there is no need for it to bear the representative’s handwritten signature or for certified copies to be sent; |
| (c) | service of the procedural documents of the other parties as well as of the decisions of the Tribunal and of all other correspondence by means of e-Curia; service shall be effected upon access to the document being obtained via the e-Curia application, failing which, it shall be deemed to have been effected on the expiry of the seventh day following the day on which the notification email was sent; |
| (d) | the fact that the applicable legislation is defined in: the decision of the Civil Service Tribunal, adopted in accordance with Article 34(7) of the Rules of Procedure, of 20 September 2011 (OJ 2011 C 289, p. 11) on the lodging and service of procedural documents by means of e-Curia; the Conditions of Use of e-Curia; and the e-Curia User Manual, which also explains how to proceed in the case of an assistant (all those documents are available on the website www.curia.europa.eu). | |
B. Transmission in paper format
| 4. | Transmission in paper format entails:
| (a) | the need for all procedural documents and annexes thereto to be lodged in paper format, duly signed by the representative; each procedural document and any annexes thereto must be accompanied by seven sets of certified copies; for the purposes of compliance with time-limits, copies sent by fax before the paper version is sent shall be taken into account if the original paper document is received at the Tribunal within 10 days of dispatch of the fax (see point 36 et seq. of these Practice Directions); |
| (b) | service of the procedural documents of the other parties as well as of the decisions of the Tribunal and of all correspondence between the Registry and the parties by the preferred method of service: by registered post with a form for acknowledgement of receipt (in which case service shall be deemed to have been effected by the lodging of the registered letter at the post office in Luxembourg), by fax or by e-Curia. | |
III. WRITTEN PROCEDURE
A. Application
1. Lodging the application
| 5. | Every application shall be addressed to the Registry of the Tribunal. It must comply with the provisions of Article 34 of the Rules of Procedure. |
| 6. | The information to be included in the application and the documents required to be annexed to it are listed in Article 35(1), (2), (3) and (5) of the Rules of Procedure. |
| 7. | Article 35(5) and the third subparagraph of Article 39(1) of the Rules of Procedure concern the certificate required to be lodged at the Registry by the applicant’s lawyer and by any lawyer who may be assisting the defendant’s agent. It should be noted that the principle of compulsory representation before the Tribunal is laid down by Article 19 of the Statute. With the exception of the Member States, other States which are parties to the EEA Agreement (Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) and the institutions of the European Union, which are represented by their agents, the parties must therefore be represented by a lawyer authorised to practise before a court of a Member State or of another State party to the EEA Agreement. However, the obligation to be represented by a lawyer does not apply to the procedure for obtaining legal aid (see, in that regard, Chapter E of Title III of these Practice Directions). |
| 8. | In addition, although no written instructions from the applicant to the lawyer representing him are required on lodging the application, any change in the number or identity of lawyer(s) (e.g. replacement of one lawyer by another, presence of an additional lawyer, withdrawal of instructions from one of the lawyers who made the application) must be notified to the Registry in writing without delay. In the event of one lawyer being replaced by another, written authorisation is required in respect of the new lawyer. |
| 9. | The applicant’s lawyer should state clearly on the first page of the application his address, the name of his chambers or practice, where appropriate, his telephone and fax numbers and email address. Any subsequent changes in that information must be notified to the Tribunal without delay. Under no circumstances can the applicant’s own address be accepted as an address for service. |
| 10. | An application lodged by means of e-Curia need not necessarily bear a handwritten signature. However, in the case of an application lodged in paper format, the handwritten signature of the lawyer must be legible and appear at the end of the application. The absence of a signature cannot be rectified. A copy, such as a stamp, facsimile signature, photocopy, etc. will not be accepted. In the case of more than one representative, the signature of one of them will be sufficient. The signature by proxy of a person other than the applicant’s representative(s) will not be accepted, even where that signatory is a member of the same chambers or practice as the representative(s). |
2. Mandatory information and rules on presentation of the application
| 11. | The language of the case shall be the language chosen for the drafting of the application, in accordance with Article 29 of the Rules of Procedure, which, in relation to language arrangements, refers to Article 35 of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court of the European Union. |
| 12. | In the interests both of the parties themselves and of the proper administration of justice, procedural documents should be as concise as possible having regard to the nature of the facts and complexity of the issues raised. Accordingly, an application should not, in principle, exceed 30 pages (A4 format, font size 12 in a font equivalent to ‘Times New Roman’, 1.5 line spacing and margins of at least 2.5 cm), depending on the circumstances of the case. Authorisation to exceed those maxima will be given only in cases involving particularly complex legal or factual issues. |
| 13. | The form of order sought must be precisely worded and set out at the beginning or end of the application, and its heads of claim must be numbered. |
| 14. | The paragraphs of the text must be numbered consecutively. |
| 15. | In order to facilitate subsequent use of the application |
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