Judgment_paragraph 60 · Alessandro Accorinti and Others v European Central Bank (T-79/13)

60First of all, the case-law relating to challenges to the refusal to grant Community financial assistance (order of 26 October 1995 in Pevasa and Inpesca v Commission, C‑199/94 P and C‑200/94 P, ECR, EU:C:1995:360, paragraph 27, and judgment of 7 February 2001 in Inpesca v Commission, T‑186/98, ECR, EU:T:2001:42, paragraphs 76 and 77), on which the ECB relies in support of its argument, is irrelevant. Unlike the situation forming the background to those decisions, in the present case the applicants do not seek, by their action for damages, to obtain a result comparable to that sought by their action for annulment in Case T‑244/12. The sole purpose of that action was to obtain the annulment of Decision 2012/153 and the applicants in that case did not pursue a financial objective. Furthermore, as that action for annulment was brought within the period prescribed in the sixth paragraph of Article 263 TFEU, any intention to circumvent that period, within the meaning of that case-law, by bringing an action for damages was precluded at the outset. It is only exceptionally, and in order to ensure that that period is not circumvented, that an action for damages has been declared inadmissible, namely where it has been brought jointly with an action for annulment, on the ground that the action for damages sought, in reality, to have an individual decision addressed to the applicant which had become final withdrawn and that it would, if successful, have had the effect of eliminating the legal effects of that decision (see, to that effect, judgments of 17 October 2002 in Astipesca v Commission, T‑180/00, ECR, EU:T:2002:249, paragraph 139, and of 3 April 2003 in Vieira and Others v Commission, T‑44/01, T‑119/01 and T‑126/01, ECR, EU:T:2003:98, point 213).