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… Any action taken by the Commission or by a Member State, acting at the request of the Commission, with regard to the unlawful aid shall the . Each shall start time running afresh. …

… Article 15, entitled ‘ ’, of Regulation 659/1999 provides: ‘(1) The powers of the Commission to recover aid shall be subject to a of 10 years. (2) The shall begin on the day on which the unlawful aid is awarded to the beneficiary either as individual aid or as aid under an aid scheme. …

… The only limitation rules which might apply before the national court are those arising under national law, interpreted in the light of the of and . (31) 100. A final clarification is required in this context regarding whether the provisions of Regulation No 659/1999 may be invoked before the national court. 101. …

… In Taricco, the Court first restated the duties of the Member States that follow from Article 325 TFEU and Article 2(1) of the PFI Convention. (24) It concluded that national provisions on the of the , which would result in there being no criminal punishment of serious fraud in a considerable number of cases, are incompatible with EU law on the ground that they are not effective and dissuasive. (25) 52. …

… First, in Scialdone, the Court recalled that, in the absence of harmonisation of the penalties in the field of VAT, it is for the Member States, in line with procedural and institutional autonomy, to decide on the penalties applicable to infringements of VAT rules, subject to respect for the of and . (35) Second, in Menci, the Court stated that Member States are free to choose penalties against VAT infringements as long as they respect fundamental rights, especially …

… That however does not make the present proceedings devoid of purpose, given that the expiry had an ex nunc and thus its results were not to those which an annulment would, in , have had. (18) 34. …

… That regulation expired on 4 March 2009 and the has never been . In particular, the fact that Gul Ahmed brought annulment proceedings does not time running for the purposes of the . (87) 111. It is theoretically possible that Gul Ahmed may have suffered other damages which materialised only later and for which the limitation period has not yet expired. …

… In accordance with Article 46 of the Statue of the Court of Justice, an action for non-contractual liability of the EU is barred after a of five years from the occurrence of the event giving rise thereto, unless that of is by the institution of proceedings alleging non-contractual liability on the part of the European Union before the Court (85) or by a prior application to the relevant institution of the European Union. …

… Those measures must ensure, in accordance with the of and , the prevention of offences affecting those interests, by the imposition of penalties that must be effective and dissuasive. …

… Article 160 of the Penal Code, which governs of the , provides: ‘The shall be by the judgment or order convicting the accused. An order applying personal interim measures … and an order fixing the preliminary hearing … shall also the . Where the is , it shall start to run anew from the day of the . …

… As regards of the , the provisions at issue restrict the situations in which the may be by confining such to procedural measures which are few in number and, if necessary, taken at a late stage in the proceedings and which, moreover, have effects. …

… of ) or render impossible in practice or excessively difficult the exercise of rights conferred by EU law ( of ) (judgments of 4 July 2006, Adeneler and Others, C-212/04, EU:C:2006:443, paragraph 95; of 7 September 2006, Vassallo, C-180/04, EU:C:2006:518, paragraph 37; of 3 July 2014, Fiamingo and Others, C-362/13, C-363/13 and C-407/13, EU:C:2014:2044, paragraph 63, and order of 11 December 2014, León Medialdea, C-86/14, not published, EU:C:2014:2447, paragraph …

… judicial protection in compliance with the of and (see, to that effect, inter alia, judgments of 15 April 2008, Impact, C-268/06, EU:C:2008:223, paragraphs 43 to 55, and of 23 April 2009, Angelidaki and Others, C-378/07 to C-380/07, EU:C:2009:250, paragraph 176, and orders of 12 June 2008, Vassilakis and Others, C-364/07, not published, EU:C:2008:346, paragraph 149, and of 24 April 2009, Koukou, C-519/08, not published, EU:C:2009:269, paragraph 101). 61 As regards …

… The detailed rules for implementing those measures must be consistent with the of and (judgment of 23 April 2009, Angelidaki and Others, C-378/07 to C-380/07, EU:C:2009:250, paragraph 174, and orders of 12 June 2008, Vassilakis and Others, C-364/07, not published, EU:C:2008:346, paragraph 142, and of 24 April 2009, Koukou, C-519/08, not published, EU:C:2009:269, paragraph 97). 59 Those requirements of equivalence and effectiveness, which embody the general obligation …

… are, ultimately, specific expressions of the of and 81. …

… Article 160 of the Codice penale contains the following provision on the of the : ‘The shall be by judgment or conviction. …

… Where it is , the shall start to run again from the day of the . If there is more than one , the shall start to run from the last such ; however, the laid down in Article 157 may not, in any circumstances, be extended beyond the fixed in the second subparagraph of Article 161 …’ 21. …

… of ) or render impossible in practice or excessively difficult the exercise of rights conferred by EU law ( of ) (see, inter alia, judgment in Fiamingo and Others, EU:C:2014:2044, paragraph 63 and the case-law cited). 79 Therefore, where abuse of successive fixed-term employment contracts or relationships has taken place, a measure offering effective and equivalent guarantees for the protection of workers must be capable of being applied in order duly to punish that …

… during which their employment was between the end of one fixed-term contract and the commencement of the next. …

… In the alternative, they claimed compensation for the damage suffered. 39 In the cases brought before them, the Tribunale di Roma and the Tribunale di Lamezia Terme questioned the compatibility of Article 4(1) and (11) of Law No 124/1999 with clause 5 of the Framework Agreement, inasmuch as that national provision enables the authorities to recruit, without , teaching, technical and administrative staff for a fixed term in order to fill vacant posts in a school’s table of staff. …

… The date for calculating the and the conditions for this shall be laid down in the implementing rules.’ 6. …

… It should also be observed that the institution of of actions does not consist solely of a time- but includes a whole set of conditions regarding its application, in particular: the starting date, the detailed rules for calculating the , causes of suspension and of the running of time, the possibility of the period being changed by the parties, the effects of expiry of the period, and so forth. 44. …

… Under EU law, the national court may be required to temper the prescription period obtaining under national law in cases where its application would not comply with the of and (see, to that effect, the judgment in Manfredi and Others, C-295/04 to C-298/04, EU:C:2006:461, paragraphs 77 to 82). 18 - I shall confine myself to citing a few examples of its application in various areas, in particular: the recovery of aid unlawfully paid (Falck and Acciaierie di Bolzano …

… for all personal actions shall be ten years.’ 13 Article 2244 of the Civil Code which defines the principal causes of an of the provides in its first and second paragraphs: ‘A summons to appear before a court, a formal notice or an attachment order, served on the person whom one wishes to prevent from invoking the statute of , shall constitute a civil . …

… of and . 35 In the present case, it appears that the of is not infringed, in so far as the five-year limitation period applies to all debts owed by the Belgian State and whose applicability does not depend on the question whether those debts arise from a breach of national or EU law, which is for the referring court to determine. 36 As regards the principle of effectiveness, the Court has stated that it is compatible with EU law to lay down reasonable …

… that they do not render practically impossible or excessively difficult the exercise of rights conferred by EU law ( of ) (see, in particular, Case C-452/09 Iaia and Others [2011] ECR I-0000, paragraph 16 and case-law cited). …

… Article 2244 of the Civil Code defines the principal causes of an of the : ‘A summons to appear before a court, a formal notice or an attachment order, served on the person whom one wishes to prevent from invoking the statute of , shall constitute a civil . A summons to appear before a court shall the until such time as a final decision is given …’. 22. …

… With regard to observance of the of and , the Court has delivered an abundance of decisions serving as guidance in addressing the first and second questions; the third question, to my mind, is without precedent and calls for a more detailed analysis. 4. …

… The referring court states that the provision cited above was inserted into the Civil Code only by virtue of the Law of 10 June 1998 amending certain provisions on the . Previously, the general rule providing for a 30-year applied. …