Judgement of the Court; 9 February 2006; in Case C-473/04; Plumex v Young Sports NV

1.     Council Regulation (EC) No 1348/2000 of 29 May 2000 on the service in the Member States of judicial and extrajudicial documents in civil or commercial matters must be interpreted as meaning that it does not establish any hierarchy between the method of transmission and service under Articles 4 to 11 thereof and that under Article 14 thereof and, consequently, it is possible to serve a judicial document by one or other or both of those methods.

2.     Regulation No 1348/2000 must be interpreted as meaning that, where transmission and service are effected by both the method under Articles 4 to 11 thereof and the method under Article 14 thereof, in order to determine vis-à-vis the person on whom service is effected the point from which time starts to run for the purposes of a procedural time-limit linked to effecting service, reference must be made to the date of the first service validly effected.