C_2006048EN.01003701.xml

25.2.2006

Official Journal of the European Union

C 48/37

Action brought on 5 December 2005 — Mediocurso — Estabelecimento de Ensino Particular SA v Commission of the European Communities

(Case T-425/05)

(2006/C 48/73)

Language of the case: Portuguese

Parties

Applicant(s): Mediocurso — Estabelecimento de Ensino Particular, SA (Lisbon, Portugal) (represented by: Carlos Botelho Moniz and Eduardo Maia Cadete, lawyers)

Defendant(s): Commission of the European Communities

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:

—

order joined to this case the administrative proceedings relating to Dossier FSE 890588/P1 under way in the Commission of the European Communities and the Department for European Social Fund Affairs, part of the Ministério para a Qulificação e o Emprego (Ministry for Qualifications and Employment) of the Portuguese Republic, which department is situated at 72 Av. Almirante Reis (3rd floor), P-1100, Lisbon, Portugal;

—

annul the decision of the Commission of the European Communities of 13 September 2005‘Reducing the amount of assistance granted by the European Social Fund to the entity “Mediocurso — Estabelecimento de Ensino particular, Lda”, in accordance with Commission Decision C (89) 0570 of 22 March 1989 in connection with Project No 890588 P1’, with the reference ‘C(2005) 3557’;

—	order the defendant to pay the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The applicant is a commercial company with the object, according to its memorandum and articles of association, of ‘providing training and technical specialisation courses and drawing up projects, studies, advice on matters of company economics, tax, accountancy and management and operation’. In 1988 it presented to the European Social Fund, through the Department for European Social Fund Affairs, various applications for assistance relating to training projects that it said it would carry out during 1989, including the application for assistance at issue in these proceedings which gave rise to File 890588 P1. The application for assistance in that file was approved and the vocational training programmes to which it related were implemented, with the result that the applicant presented the corresponding request for final payment.

The act challenged by the applicant is the decision adopted by the Commission following the presentation of the claim for final payment and various procedural documents.

The applicant claims that the Commission has infringed essential procedural requirements, having regard to the inadequacy of the reasons given for the contested decision.

It also alleges breach of the principles of legal certainty and of the protection of legitimate expectations, in so far as the contested act is incompatible, in a manner disadvantageous to the applicant, with the earlier act certifying the accuracy of the facts and accounts given by the applicant in the final payment application it had submitted. Last, it alleges a manifest error in the assessment of the documentary evidence of expenditure put forward by Mediocurso and breach of the principle of proportionality, in that the contested decision does not deal with the grounds of fact and law relied on in support of the reduction of assistance which is its subject-matter.