4.4.2 Transitional provisions – immediate applicability of Article 13(1) RPBA 2020

According to Art. 25(1) RPBA 2020, the RPBA 2020 apply, as a general rule, to any appeal pending on, or filed after, the date of entry into force. This principle of immediate application is subject to the two exceptions provided for in Art. 25(2) and (3) RPBA 2020. However, as pointed out in e.g. T 2227/15, these two exceptions concern only those provisions which specifically govern the initial stage and the ultimate stage of the appeal proceedings, leaving the intermediate stage, i.e. the second level of the convergent approach (Art. 13(1) RPBA 2020), to be governed by the general rule set out in Art. 25(1) RPBA 2020.

In other words, the general applicability of the RPBA 2020 to any appeal pending on their date of entry into force includes Art. 13(1) RPBA 2020, irrespective of whether the summons to oral proceedings was notified before 1 January 2020 (T 1386/18 with reference to T 2227/15, T 32/16 and T 634/16). Likewise T 2112/16.

In T 1577/19 the board refused the request for referral of a question on whether the new procedural provisions applicable to proceedings before the boards since the beginning of 2020 could be applied retrospectively to older cases, finding that this question had already been answered in the affirmative by the RPBA 2020 themselves (Art. 24(1) RPBA 2020) and by the case law.