Following a long legal battle before the EU Court (judgments T-29/15 and T-381/15) and subsequent appeals by the inter-state organisation IMG, the EU Court of Justice annulled on Thursday 31 January (joint cases C-183/17 P and C- 184/17 P), a European Commission decision of December 2014 re-allocating to the German public operator GIZ a contract for technical assistance to Myanmar's trade policy for an amount of €10 million first allocated to IMG and a second Commission decision of May 2015 excluding IMG from any new delegation agreement for indirect management financed by the EU budget.
These decisions followed a report by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) challenging IMG's status as an international organisation and excluding it from any future involvement in the indirect management of the programmes.
In its judgment, the Court notes that the legal arguments developed by OLAF and underlying the Commission's decisions constitute a legal error both in terms of international law and the EU's financial regulations and are in no way sufficient to call into question IMG's status as an international organisation. It confirms that the Commission's decisions in question, which have had binding legal effects depriving IMG of any possibility of being entrusted with new budget delegation contracts, justify its claim for compensation for the damage suffered and refers the determination of IMG's claim for compensation to the Court of First Instance for consideration. (Original version in French by Francesco Gariazzo)