Because a man and a woman want to know why their son committed suicide and this simple request is denied to them, can European law be modified? This is the issue at stake in a decision by the Paris Court of Appeal, rendered on January 16. In inevitably arduous prose, his judgment puts a wedge into a fundamental principle which governs the multiple European agencies created throughout the European Union: their legal immunity vis-à-vis the country which hosts them.
Twelve years that Denise and Daniel Kieffer have been fighting to bring to justice those who, the couple believes, pushed their son Philippe to kill himself at home, in Leiden, in the Netherlands, on December 20, 2011, at the age 38 years old. An experienced mountaineer, accomplished musician, accomplished polyglot, Philippe Kieffer was an engineer at the prestigious European Space Agency (ESA). A gifted man, in short.
The Frenchman had worked since 2003 in an ESA technical center based in the Netherlands. But, from 2009, he began to speak to his parents about the systematic harassment to which he was subjected by some of his superiors. His evaluations soon described him as “asocial” Or “autistic”. The humiliations are public. ” I do not want to see you anymore ! », a boss shouts at him in a meeting. Until irreparable: “For three years I have suffered martyrdom in my workplace. It had to be put an end to it.”he wrote in a farewell letter to his parents, found at the scene of the tragedy.
Searches impossible
An ESA internal audit report left little doubt about the reasons for its action. He concluded that “Philippe Kieffer’s suicide was caused by work problems.” His gesture is “due to a chain of unintentional but fateful omissions at many levels”, added the audit. The payment of a sum of 189,722.40 euros to the parents was even decided by the agency as compensation. The ESA, however, refused to accept the idea of moral harassment and the accusation of the protagonists.
The family then took criminal action to French justice – the country where the ESA headquarters is located. But two investigating judges successively came up against the legal immunity enjoyed by the European body since its creation in 1975. This immunity is enshrined in an agreement signed at the time between the agency and France. This same principle governs the functioning of all European agencies, in whatever country of the Union where they are established. The idea is to escape the cacophony (and competition) of local social rights. Only internal remedies are possible in the event of contesting a decision or sanction. For the rest, the host State can take legal action but under limited conditions and only before an international arbitration tribunal.
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