B. I. v. European Space Agency

The case concerned an engineer employed by the European Space Agency (ESA) under a four-year contract beginning in 2005, which was extended in 2008 for an additional six years. After reporting a deterioration in her working conditions and being placed on sick leave, she brought proceedings before the Labour Court of Paris in 2009 seeking compensation for moral harassment. In 2010, the ESA Director-General terminated her employment. The applicant simultaneously attempted to pursue internal remedies: she seized the ESA Appeals Board, which rejected her claims in 2011, declaring some of them unfounded and others inadmissible for lack of a prior decision by the Director-General submitted to the Advisory Committee. She also sought the lifting of ESA’s immunity, but the organization’s Council refused.

Before the national courts, the applicant maintained that ESA could not rely on immunity because its internal dispute-settlement system did not offer guarantees equivalent to those required by French international public order and Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). She argued that the Appeals Board lacked independence and full jurisdiction, and that procedural obstacles, particularly the requirement that only the Director-General may seize the Advisory Committee, prevented effective access to the internal tribunal.

The Supreme Court (Court of Cassation) dismissed the appeal, upholding ESA’s immunity and confirming the Labour Court’s lack of jurisdiction. It held that the ESA Appeals Board constituted a judicial mechanism offering sufficient guarantees of independence, impartiality, adversarial procedure, publicity of hearings, and power to annul decisions and award reparation. The Court considered that the requirement of a prior decision and the involvement of the Advisory Committee did not amount to disproportionate constraints on access to the internal tribunal. It further noted that ESA is not a party to the ECHR, and that the organization’s internal mechanism met the standards inherent in the French conception of international public order. On this basis, ESA was entitled to invoke its immunity from jurisdiction, and the applicant was required to pursue internal remedies.