Judgment — ECLI:EU:F:2015:36
Date: 2015-04-29
Language of the case: French
Court formation: Single Judge
Based on: Merger Treaty (1965)
Subject matter: Staff regulations and employment conditions - EC
Procedure: Staff cases - unfounded;Staff cases - inadmissible

Summary Officials — Promotion — Consideration of comparative merits — Administration’s discretion — Judicial review — Limits — Manifest error of assessment — Concept (Staff Regulations, Art. 45) The administration has a wide discretion when assessing the merits to be taken into consideration in a promotion decision under Article 45 of the Staff Regulations, and the same consequently applies to a decision to award merit points. Review by the Courts of the Union must therefore be limited to ascertaining whether, regard being had to the factors and reasons that led the administration to its assessment, it remained within unimpeachable limits and did not manifestly misuse its power. In order to establish that the administration committed a manifest error in assessing the facts such as to justify the annulment of a decision, the evidence, which it is for the applicant to adduce, must be sufficient to make the findings of the competent authority implausible. In other words, a plea alleging a manifest error must be rejected if, despite the evidence adduced by the official concerned, the contested assessment may still be accepted as true or valid. As regards promotion, an error may thus be classified as manifest where it is easily recognisable and can be readily detected, in the light of the criteria to which the legislature intended promotion decisions to be subject. In that regard, the administration enjoys a wide discretion as to the respective importance which it ascribes to each of the three criteria provided for in Article 45(1) of the Staff Regulations, the provisions of which do not preclude the possibility of weighting being applied between those criteria. (see paras 42-44) See: Judgment in Canga Fano v Council, T‑281/11 P, EU:T:2013:252, para. 123 Judgments in Collee v Parliament, F‑148/06, EU:F:2008:169, paras 39 and 40; Canga Fano v Council, F‑104/09, EU:F:2011:29, para. 35; Buxton v Parliament, F‑50/11, EU:F:2012:51, paras 37 and 38, and Bouillez v Council, F‑75/11, EU:F:2012:152, para. 58