Judgment_paragraph 23 · European Parliament v Carlo Ripa di Meana, Leoluca Orlando and Gastone Parigi (C-470/00 P)

23In that regard, the Court of First Instance held in particular as follows:75 The Court finds that the Parliament, in order to satisfy the requirements stemming from the principle of legal certainty and sound administration and having regard to Article 27(1) of the Rules Governing the Payment of Expenses and Allowances to Members of the Parliament, ought to have informed the Members concerned of the amendment to Annex III by way of individual notification with a form of acknowledgement of receipt.76 Only by acting in this way would the Parliament have conducted itself in conformity with the case-law of the Community judicature, which requires that every measure of the administration having legal effects must be clear and precise and must be brought to the notice of the person concerned in such a way that he can ascertain exactly the time at which the measure comes into being and begins to have legal effects (see Joined Cases T-18/89 and T-24/89 Tagaras v Court of Justice [1991] ECR II-53, paragraph 40; see also the judgment of the Court of Justice in Case 5/85 AKZO Chemie v Commission [1986] ECR 2585, paragraph 39).77 Since there was no such notification, a period prescribed for the submission of an application based on a measure providing for pension rights of the kind involved in the present case can only begin to run, according to Community case-law, from the moment at which the party concerned, having learnt of the existence of that measure, acquires, within a reasonable period, precise knowledge of that measure (see, to that effect, Case T-100/92 La Pietra v Commission [1994] ECRSC I-A-83 and II-275, paragraph 30, and the case-law cited therein).78 Even though the applicants do not deny having become aware of the existence of the amendment to Annex III during the early months of 1998, the Parliament has not proved that they had precise knowledge of the amending measure more than six months before the applications were submitted on 19 November 1998. Furthermore, the facts of the case show that that precise knowledge was acquired within a reasonable time.79 Accordingly, the applicants submitted their applications for membership of the provisional pension scheme within the period prescribed by the amendment to Annex III.’