In the first case of this kind, the General Court of the EU has examined the length of its own procedures. In the conclusion it reached on Tuesday 10 January it decided that concluding a competition case within the timeframe of five years and nine months was excessive and warranted compensation to the respective parties involved (Case T-577/14).
The Court of Justice of the European Union called on the General Court to examine this issue. In 2013, the former decided that the duration of the first instance procedures in the case involving industrial bags appeared excessive (see EUROPE 10971). This procedure lasted five years and nine months. The Court considers that the companies involved Gascogne Sack Deutschland and Gascogne, should be able to introduce an appeal for compensation. This is quite an exceptional situation and there are only currently four similar cases being examined at the General Court, which is involved in all issues involving competition.
Although the two companies did not ultimately obtain the amounts they had hoped for, the General Court granted them around €50,000 in damages and interest, as opposed to the €4 million they had requested, which enabled them to put forward a legal case questioning the duration of proceedings at the European courts. The General Court argued that this kind of case, namely, those pertaining to competition, presented the highest degree of complexity and therefore constituted a reference point for the maximum duration in settling a case.
In the two cases analysed, it is particularly the stage of the procedure that was abnormally long: the stage between the end of the written phase and opening the oral phase. This lasted 46 months, which ultimately proved to be too much when one is supposed to have the right to see a case tackled within a reasonable deadline, as stipulated in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
The General Court held that this timeframe should not exceed 15 months. A single exception has been taken into account for the most complicated cases. Therefore, the parallel treatment of related cases could justify an extension of the procedure by one month for an additional related case. Given that the General Court should have ruled on 12 appeals directed against the same decision by the Commission for this agreement, the deadline could therefore be extended by 11 months.
In the initial cases, the procedures between the written and oral phases should have taken 26 months at the most and not 46. This explains the decision taken by the General Court in this regard to pay the interested parties compensation worth €47,000 as part of compensation for material harm (the payment of additional bank guarantee costs) and non-material harm (the state of uncertainty in which the two companies found themselves). (Original version in French by Jan Kordys)