Luxembourg, 08/11/2001 (Agence Europe) - The Court of First Instance has declared patently inadmissible the appeal by a retired official of the European Investment Bank who, having married his companion late in life, demanded of the EIB that it take note of the new family situation.
The EIB had told Pieter F. Fleurbaay that the institution's pension scheme did not, in its current wording, allow family allowances destined for married people to be extended to homosexuals.
The official claimed that his union had been registered in the Netherlands by an act of "partnershap", equivalent to a marriage contract. The fourth chamber presided over by the Finnish judge Virpi Tiili declared that this appeal was patently inadmissible, Pieter F. Fleubay having attacked a simple letter of the Commission refusing him the allowance, which had nothing of a legal "decision" that can be attacked before the Court (also see EUROPE of 3 February 1999 for a case D., in which the Court had said that a partnership contract could not, as we stood, be assimilated to a marriage contract).
The Netherlands sided with the official.