On Thursday, 11 January, the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) indicated that it had set aside the General Court of the European Union’s dismissal of the action concerning the claim for compensation for non-material and material damage that was submitted by the company Planistat Europe and its director, Hervé-Patrick Charlot.
In September 1999, a report by the Eurostat Internal Audit Service had found irregularities in Planistat Europe’s management of sales outlets for statistical information (‘datashops’).
OLAF had then opened an external investigation into the company, forwarding information relating to matters liable to be characterised as criminal to the French judicial authorities.
Before the investigation was closed, a press release issued by the European Commission announced the contracts concluded with Planistat would be terminated.
Moreover, Hervé-Patrick Charlot had been placed under investigation, in September 2003, for misappropriation and complicity in breach of trust after a judicial investigation was opened by the Paris public prosecutor.
Following the order dismissing the proceedings that was issued by the investigating judge of the Tribunal de grande instance de Paris [Paris Regional Court] in September 2013, Planistat and Mr Charlot then asked the European Commission to pay them €11.6 million for the damage suffered as a result of the complaint that was filed and the press releases that were published.
The European Commission rejected the request, finding that the conditions for the European Union to incur non-contractual liability had not been met.
Mr Charlot and Planistat then brought the matter before the General Court of the EU, which, in a judgment dated 6 April 2022, dismissed the action. An appeal was then lodged with the Court of Justice in order to request that the General Court’s judgment be set aside.
The Court of Justice found that the General Court had erred in law by failing to examine “the credibility and content of the information or material in the note of 19 March 2003 [information from OLAF relating to matters, in its view, liable to be characterised as criminal], the intention with which that information or that material was forwarded to the French judicial authorities, or whether that information or material could justify the opening of a judicial investigation or constitute evidence relevant to such an investigation”.
The Court of Justice has thus referred the case back to the General Court so that it can carry out a new examination of the possible existence of a breach of a rule of EU law that would be sufficiently serious so as to incur the European Union’s non-contractual liability.
To see the court’s judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/ad1 (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)