Brussels, 23/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 23 April, the EU Court of Justice upheld the sanctions - including an assets freeze and a travel ban - imposed in October 2010 by the EU Council upon the former Ivoirian president, Laurent Gbagbo, and a number of his associates.
The Court dismissed en bloc the appeals made by Gbagbo, his former prime minister, Pascal Affi N'Guessan, and other members of the former Ivoirian government, for annulment of measures introduced against them by the EU General Court in July 2011. The latter considered their appeals against these acts by the Council were inadmissible because they were made too late. Gbagbo and associates said that the measures in question had not been properly communicated to them since they did not receive direct communication but indirect communication by means of notices published in the Official Journal of the EU (OJEU), which explains the late appeal. Also, the General Court, they said, had not considered the fact that the Côte d'Ivoire was in a situation of armed conflict which constitutes force majeure, preventing them from effectively exercising their right to bring proceedings.
On the same point, the Court considered that the measures were, in fact, communicated to Gbagbo and his associates and that the period for bringing proceedings ran from the date of publication of the notices in the OJEU (and not, as the General Court had said, from the date of publication of the measures themselves). Nonetheless, as that time had indeed expired when the actions were brought, the General Court, says the EU Court of Justice, was correct in declaring the actions to be inadmissible, because they were brought outside those periods. Furthermore, the situation of armed conflict having been invoked by those concerned (without saying how and during what period that situation had prevented them from bringing proceedings), it could not be invoked as a case of force majeure justifying overrunning the date for introducing legal action. (FG/transl.jl)