Judgment — ECLI:EU:T:2001:12
Date: 2001-01-17
Based on: Merger Treaty (1965)
Subject matter: Staff regulations and employment conditions - EC
Concepts: Conduct of competitions
Procedure: Staff cases - unfounded

SUMMARY — CASE T-189/99 
Summary 
1. Officials - Competitions - Assessment of the merits of candidates -
Re-examination of a decision excluding a candidate from the tests subsequent to the 
preselection test in a competition involving a large number of candidates — 
Obligations of the selection board 
(Staff Regulations, Annex III, Art. 5) 
2. Officials - Competitions — Competition based on tests - Content of the tests 
- Steps taken to remedy errors or irregularities occurring in the course of the 
competition — Discretion of the Selection Board - Judicial review — Limits 
3. Officials - Competitions — Selection board - Rejection of candidature — 
Obligation to state reasons — Scope — Observance of the secrecy of the board's 
proceedings - Steps taken to remedy errors or irregularities occurring in the course 
of the competition 
(Staff Regulations, Annex III, Art. 6) 
1. When a selection board in a competition is faced with a request for 
reconsideration of a decision excluding a candidate who has taken part in a 
competition, that selection board is required to carry out, with all the required 
diligence, a genuine re-examination of the decision which is the subject of that 
request. However, where such a request for reconsideration is made in the context 
of the pre-selection procedure in a general competition involving a large number of 
candidates, which has taken the form of a multiple-choice questionnaire, that 
requirement may legitimately consist merely of a check that the marks 
communicated to the excluded candidate do in fact correspond to those which he 
obtained. That is a fortiori the case where that candidate's request for 
reconsideration is made in very general terms without calling in question any 
particular aspect of the pre-selection tests in which he took part. 
(see para. 19) 
I-A - 12 
GEROCHRISTOS v COMMISSION 
See: 100/87, 146/87 and 153/87 BASCH and Others v Commission [1989] ECR 447, para. 
16 
2. The selection board in a competition has a wide discretion with regard to the 
detailed procedures for and content of the tests to be held in connection with the 
competition. The Community judicature may therefore review the detailed 
procedures for the tests only in so far as is necessary in order to ensure the equal 
treatment of the candidates and the objectivity of the selection made between them. 
The selection board must also enjoy that wide discretion, within the same limits, 
when it is faced with irregularities or errors which have occurred in the course of 
a general competition involving a large number of candidates and which cannot, 
under the principles of proportionality and sound administration, be rectified by a 
repetition of the tests in the competition. 
The argument that the retroactive cancellation of certain questions constitutes a 
breach of the principle of equal treatment since the time devoted to those questions 
differs from one candidate to another is based on a misconception of that principle. 
That argument relates, not to an irregularity in the conditions governing the 
competition which are imposed on the candidates, or to an inequality in the 
assessment made by the selection board of the various candidates, but to the 
individual performance of those candidates themselves. Far from demonstrating that 
any discrimination has been committed, that argument merely emphasises the 
existence of differences between the candidates taking part in a competition. 
(see paras 25-26) 
See: T-27/92 Camera-Lampitelli and Others v Commission [1993] ECR II-873, para. 45; 
T-153/95 Kaps v Court of Justice [1996] ECR-SC I-A-233 and II-663, para. 37; 
C-254/95 P Parliament v Innamorati [1996] ECR I-3423, para. 33 
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SUMMARY — CASET-189/99 
3. The criteria for marking adopted by the selection board, both prior to the tests 
and during the determination of possible irregularities or errors committed in the 
course of those tests, form an integral part of the comparative assessments which 
it makes of the candidates' respective merits. Those criteria are therefore covered 
by the secrecy of the proceedings in the same way as the selection board's 
assessments. 
Having regard to the secrecy which must surround such proceedings of a selection 
board, communication both of the marks obtained in the various tests and of the fact 
that certain questions have been retroactively cancelled by reassigning all the marks 
for the test concerned to the remaining questions constitutes an adequate statement 
of the reasons on which the board's decisions are based, which is not prejudicial to 
the rights of the unsuccessful candidates, while enabling the Court of First Instance 
to carry out a judicial review appropriate for that type of dispute. 
(see para. 34) 
See: Parliament v Innamorati, cited above, paras 28 to 34 
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