In a judgment handed down on Wednesday 5 June (Case T-134/21), the General Court of the European Union rejected an investment company’s claim for damages for alleged unlawful conduct in the supervision of Banca Carige by the European Central Bank (ECB), acting as the single supervisor within the euro area.
In Italy, the investment company Malacalza is asking the General Court to order the European Union to pay it more than €870 million in compensation for the damage it allegedly suffered as a result of the ECB’s supervision of Banca Carige. In its view, some of the ECB’s actions infringe the principles of protection of property, impartiality, transparency and equal treatment, among others.
In its judgment, the General Court dismissed the action. It points out that, in order for the EU to incur non-contractual liability, a company must establish that three cumulative conditions are met: - unlawful conduct attributable to an EU institution in the exercise of its functions; - the fact of damage; - the existence of a causal link between the alleged conduct and the harm claimed.
The first of these conditions is met when the contested conduct involves a rule of law conferring rights on undertakings and when the breach of which the EU institution is accused is sufficiently serious. Malacalza must therefore prove that the ECB has seriously and manifestly disregarded, beyond its discretion, an EU rule conferring rights on it.
The European Court concluded that this requirement had not been met. In its view, either the relevant rules of EU law do not confer any rights on undertakings, or the infringement in question is not sufficiently serious, or Malacalza’s arguments are inadmissible.
See the General Court’s judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/cjq (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)