Judgment — ECLI:EU:T:2001:14
Date: 2001-01-18
Language of the case: French
Court formation: Third Chamber
Based on: Merger Treaty (1965)
Subject matter: Staff regulations and employment conditions - EC
Concepts: Appointment
Procedure: Staff cases - successful

SUMMARY — CASE T-65/00 
Summary 
1. Officials — Recruitment — Refusal to appoint on grounds of physical unfitness 
— Judicial review — Scope 
(Staff Regulations, Arts 28(e) and 33) 
2. Officials - Recruitment - Refusal to recruit on grounds of physical unfitness -
Consideration of present or future physical or psychological disorders - Whether 
permissible — Future disorders - Concept 
(Staff Regulations, Arts 28(e) and 33) 
1. Judicial review of a refusal to recruit on grounds of physical unfitness does not 
extend to medical findings properly so-called, which must be considered definitive 
provided that the conditions in which they are made are not irregular. However, the 
Community judicature does have jurisdiction to verify whether those conditions have 
been observed and, more particularly, to examine whether the decision of the 
appointing authority refusing to recruit a candidate is based on a medical opinion 
for which reasons are given, and which establishes a comprehensible link between 
the medical findings it contains and the conclusion which it reaches. 
(see paras 22-23) 
See: 189/82 Seiler and Others v Council [1984] ECR 229, para. 15; T-10/93 A v 
Commission [1994] ECR-SC I-A-119 and II-387, para. 61; T-94/92 X v Commission 
[1994] ECR-SC I-A-149 and II-481, para. 40; T-47/93 C v Commission [1994] 
ECR-SC I-A-233 and II-743, para. 47 
2. It is possible for the medical officer of an institution and the medical committee 
to base a finding that a candidate is unfit not only on the existence of actual physical 
or psychological disorders but also on a medically justified prognosis of future 
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IOANNOU v COUNCIL 
disorders capable of jeopardising in the foreseeable future the normal performance 
of the duties in question. 
Future disorders are those linked to the development of the disorder from which the 
candidate for the post in the Community administration is suffering at the time of 
the pre-employment medical examination. A candidate suffering from a disorder 
which, at the time of the pre-employment medical examination, does not prevent 
him from fulfilling all the tasks which are likely to fall to him in connection with 
the duties in question, may thus be declared physically unfit to perform the latter 
if it is foreseeable with a reasonable degree of certainty that the disorder in question 
will develop in such a way that the person concerned will be incapable in the 
foreseeable future of performing those duties normally. 
(see paras 37-38) 
See: 155/78 M. v Commission [1980] ECR 1797, para. 11; A v Commission, cited above, 
para 62; C v Commission, cited above, para. 49 
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