Judgment — ECLI:EU:T:2001:239
Date: 2001-09-20
Based on: Merger Treaty (1965)
Subject matter: Staff regulations and employment conditions - EC
Concepts: Conditions of Employment of Other Servants of the European Communities;Interest in bringing proceedings
Procedure: Staff cases - unfounded

SUMMARY — CASE T-95/01 
Summary 
1. Officials — Actions — Interest in bringing proceedings - Action for annulment 
of an appointment of a member of the temporary staff, brought by an official after 
refusing to take part in the procedure leading to the appointment — Inadmissibility 
of the action — Conditions 
(Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91) 
2. Officials - Temporary staff - Temporary staff in Grade A 1 as referred to in 
Art. 2(a) of the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants — Recruitment -
Choice of methods of organising the selection procedure and conduct of that 
procedure — Discretion of the authority authorised to conclude contracts of 
engagement — Call for applications — Purpose — Conditions for admission 
(Conditions of Employment of Other Servants, Art. 2(a); Staff Regulations, Art. 5(1)) 
3. Officials - Temporary staff — Temporary staff in Grade A 1 as referred to in 
Article 2(a) of the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants — Recruitment -
Qualifications in the call for applications — 'High level' professional experience — 
Discretion of the authority authorised to conclude contracts of engagement — 
Conditions — Judicial review 
(Conditions of Employment of Other Servants, Arts 2(a), 10 and 12; Staff 
Regulations, Arts 5(4), second subpara., and 27) 
4. Officials — Temporary staff — Recruitment — Call for applications -
Examination of the professional experience of the candidates — Discretion of the 
authority authorised to conclude contracts of engagement — Judicial review — 
Limits 
5. Officials — Temporary staff — Recruitment — Procedure — Pre-recruitment 
interview - Post of Secretary-General of the Court of Auditors — Special selection 
procedure 
(Rules of Procedure of the Court of Auditors, Art. 12) 
I-A - 192 
COGET AND OTHERS v COURT OF AUDITORS 
1. An official who has voluntarily decided not to apply for a vacant post and has 
thus refused to take part in the appointment procedure cannot then challenge the 
appointment of a third party, made as the result of a procedure which has followed 
its normal course. That principle applies mutatis mutandis where the applicant has 
voluntarily decided not to respond to a call for applications for the selection of a 
member of the temporary staff. 
(see para. 38) 
See: 252/81 Macevicius v Parliament [1983] ECR 867, para. 10 
2. Since the procedures and obligations relating to the recruitment of officials do not 
apply to the recruitment of a member of the temporary staff in Grade A 1, as 
referred to in Article 2(a) of the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants, the 
authority authorised to conclude contracts of engagement has a very wide discretion 
both in the choice of the methods of organising the selection procedure and in the 
conduct of that procedure. In particular, an institution is not obliged to publish any 
form of call for applications for the recruitment of its secretary-general. 
Consequently, although it is true that, just as a notice of vacancy is binding on the 
appointing authority, the authority authorised to conclude contracts of engagement 
is obliged to comply with the conditions laid down in the call for applications which 
it chooses freely to issue, it cannot be a ground of complaint against it that it did not 
provide a more precise and detailed description of some of the conditions set out in 
that call. 
Moreover, the relevant rule - that a notice of competition may lawfully merely 
repeat, without specifying the level of experience required for the post to be filled, 
the general wording of Article 5(1) of the Staff Regulations for the category to 
which that post belongs and thus leave it to the Selection Board to decide in each 
case whether the qualifications and diplomas produced and the professional 
experience claimed by each candidate correspond to the level required by the Staff 
Regulations, and therefore by the notice, for the performance of the duties in 
question - is a fortiori transposable where the post in question is a high level 
I-A - 193 
SUMMARY — CASE T-95/01 
temporary staff post for which an institution has freely decided to use the procedure 
of a call for applications. 
(see paras 56, 58, 69) 
See: 225/87 Belardinelli and Others v Court of Justice [1989] ECR 2353, paras 13 and 
14; T-46/89 Pitrone v Commission [1990] ECR II-577, para. 26; T-21/98 Leite Mateus 
v Commission [1999] ECR-SC I-A-25 and II-107, para. 31 
3. For the recruitment of an institution's secretary-general, who is a member of the 
temporary staff in Grade A l , the authority authorised to conclude contracts of 
engagement has, subject to the prohibition of discrimination, a very wide discretion 
in the interpretation of the call for applications which it has chosen freely to issue 
and, in particular, to decide whether the professional experience claimed by each 
candidate corresponds to the level required by that call, and, therefore, to determine 
what must be understood by 'high level' experience. That assessment cannot be 
called in question, except in the event of manifest error. 
Moreover, the concept of 'high level' experience is not defined in the Staff 
Regulations, the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants or Decision 98/47 of 
the Court of Auditors laying down general provisions for the implementation of the 
second subparagraph of Article 5(4) of the Staff Regulations, describing the duties 
and powers attaching to each basic post in the various grades. There is no 
justification for maintaining that the expression 'high level' refers only to European 
Civil Service Grades A 2 and A 3. That is a fortiori the case where both 
candidatures internal to the Community institutions and external candidatures are to 
be assessed. 
I-A - 194 
COGET AND OTHERS v COURT OF AUDITORS 
Under Article 27 of the Staff Regulations and Article 12 of the Conditions of 
Employment of Other Servants, recruitment and engagement must be directed to 
securing for the institution the services of officials and servants of the highest 
standard of ability, efficiency and integrity. According to Article 5 of the Staff 
Regulations, which, pursuant to Article 10 of the Conditions of Employment of 
Other Servants, applies by analogy to the classification of temporary staff, Category 
A includes the highest-ranking posts and comprises eight grades, divided into career 
brackets ordinarily containing two grades each for staff engaged in administrative 
and advisory duties. 
Grades A 4 and A 5 correspond to the basic posts of principal administrator and can 
therefore be regarded as 'high level'. Since the Staff Regulations and the Conditions 
of Employment of Other Servants require all officials in Category A to have 
university education and potential management qualities, it is consistent with those 
prescribed characteristics to take the view that an official who, in addition, has 
unquestionable experience in Grades A 7 and A 6 can properly be regarded as 'high 
level' when he reaches Grade A 5 and above. 
In any event, an institution cannot be considered to have made a manifest error of 
assessment when it took the view, in the interests of placing all internal and external 
candidates possessing many types of experience in diverse fields on an equal 
footing, that experience acquired in the European Civil Service Grades A 4 and A 
5 could be taken into account as the 'high level' professional experience required 
in the call for applications. 
(see paras 85-88, 113) 
See: 198/87 Kerznann v Court of Auditors [1989] ECR 2083, paras 19 and 20; T-20/89 
Moritz v Commission [1990] ECR II-769, para. 29; T-160/89 and T-161/89 Kalavros v 
Court of Justice [1990] ECR II-871 ; T-586/93 Kotzonis v ESC [1995] ECR II-665, para. 
81; T-589/93 Ryan-Sheridan v EFILWC [1996] ECR-SC I-A-27 and II-77, para. 75; 
T-178/95 and T-179/95 Picciolo and Caló v Committee of the Regions [1997] ECR-SC 
I-A - 195 
SUMMARY — CASE T-95/01 
I-A-51 and II-155, para. 95; T-203/97 Forvass v Commission [1999] ECR-SC I-A-129 
and II-705, para. 45 
4. The authority authorised to conclude contracts of engagement has a wide 
discretion, in particular where the post to be filled is a Grade A 1 or A 2 post, to 
decide whether the professional experience claimed by each candidate corresponds 
to the level required by the call for applications which it was, moreover, not obliged 
to issue. That assessment cannot be called in question, except in the event of a 
manifest error. 
(see para. 113) 
See: Kerzmann v Court of Auditors, cited above, paras 19 and 20; Moritz v Commission, 
cited above, para. 29; Kalavros v Court of Justice, cited above; Kotzonis v ESC, cited 
above, para. 81; Ryan-Sheridan v EFILWC, cited above; Picciolo and Caló v Committee 
of the Regions, cited above, para. 95; Forvass v Commission, cited above, para. 45 
5. There is no provision in the Staff Regulations which grants to a candidate in a 
recruitment procedure the right to an interview with his potential immediate superior 
or which establishes an obligation to call the person concerned to such an interview 
as a matter of course. The authority authorised to conclude contracts of engagement 
cannot therefore be obliged to arrange interviews with the candidates for a post 
unless, and in so far as, such an obligation arises from the legal framework which 
it has established for itself. 
Moreover, although the holding of interviews with candidates for a post to be filled 
may constitute an important aspect of the procedures for appointing or promoting 
officials, or even of the recruitment of certain members of the temporary staff, in 
so far as the interview facilitates consideration of their comparative merits, the same 
does not apply to the procedure for the selection of the Secretary-General of the 
Court of Auditors, which is quite different from those mentioned above. Far from 
I-A - 196 
COGET AND OTHERS v COURT OF AUDITORS 
requiring any consideration of comparative merits, the only provision relating to the 
recruitment of the Secretary-General, namely Article 12 of the Rules of Procedure 
of the Court of Auditors, lays down that he is to be appointed by the Court 
following an election by secret ballot. 
(see paras 136-138) 
See: T-118/95 Anacoreta Correia v Commission [1996] ECR-SC I-A-283 and II-835, 
para. 36 
I-A - 197