Opinion of Mr Advocate General Mancini

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

2. In a preliminary objection, the Economic and Social Committee contests the admissibility of the application in so far as it is directed against a decision adopted on 3 April 1979 which became definitive and therefore incapable of being challenged some years ago. The fact that the administration subsequently and on several occasions provided the applicant, at her request, with further explanations did not cause the time for taking action to start running again, since those explanations were confirmatory and had no legal effect.

3. I do not think those arguments can be upheld. Let me refer the Court first of all to its well established case-law according to which only those acts [of the administration] capable of directly affecting a precise legal position can be regarded as adversely affecting an official (judgment of 11 July 1974 in Joined Cases 177/73 and 5/74 Reinan v Commission [1974] ECR 819; judgment of 11 July 1985 in Joined Cases 66 to 68 and 136 to 140/83 Hattet v Commission [1985] ECR 2459). The letter of 3 April 1979 certainly falls within that category; by that letter the Director General acknowledged the applicant's right to receive the foreign residence allowance for the period between 12 May and 30 June 1978 but at the same time denied that she was entitled to it for the period after the latter date, on the ground that she no longer satisfied the conditions laid down in Article 4 of Annex VII.

4. On the basis of the foregoing considerations I propose that the Court should declare that the action brought by Mrs De Fraye, née Trenti, against the Economic and Social Committee is inadmissible and that in accordance with Article 70 of the Rules of Procedure the parties should be ordered to bear their own costs.

1 Translated from the Italian.