1.

I think that in the course of the procedure which resulted in his service being terminated Mr Almini was not afforded those safeguards the observance of which is one of the conditions of the legality of the measure finally adopted. Unlike certain national regulations, the Staff Regulations in fact apply in principle even to officials occupying the highest posts in the service, that is to say, officials in Grades A 1 and A 2. Nevertheless the Staff Regulations lay down some special provisions in relation to them, the most important of these being Article 29 (2), as regards recruitment and Article 50 as regards dismissal. This lastmentioned Article provides that officials in Grades A 1 and A 2 may be retired in the interests of the service and that such retirement shall not constitute a disciplinary measure. It also provides that if it is not possible to assign them to another post, such officials shall foe dismissed and shall receive certain allowances. Does this therefore mean that officials in Grades A 1 and A 2 do not for the purposes of Article 50 benefit from any kind of safeguard in connexion with their dismissal? I do not think so; on the contrary I believe that under the general principles of law a measure as serious as retirement, when it is followed by dismissal, a measure which necessarily involves, at least partially, taking into account the individual concerned, implies that at the very least he must be warned of the measure contemplated and put in a position to submit his comments to the appointing authority. Besides, this would also appear to be the Commission's view, as is shown by the manner in which the administrative procedure developed in this case. Mr Almini was in fact warned of the Commission's intention to retire him; he was called upon to submit his comments and he complied with this request. But in the circumstances of the case, was not this formality deprived of much of its value, in other words was Mr Almini able not only to make his observations but effectively to make such observations? For two reasons I do not think that he was and each of these seems conclusive: (a) The time given to Mr Almini to make his observations was clearly too short. By letter dated 20 January 1970 Mr Bodson asked him to make his observations by 26 January at the latest. Even assuming that Mr Almini received this letter in Luxembourg by 21 January and also that he could have taken the risk of not replying until 25 January, instead of on 24 January as he did, it none the less remains a fact that Mr Almini had only four clear days to comment on a measure the purpose of which was, after sixteen years of service hitherto considered satisfactory, to deprive him of his post and to oblige him at the age of 47 to start ‘job-hunting’, to use current parlance. This time-limit was clearly insufficient even if one takes into account the fact that on the previous Monday, that is to say on 19 January, Mr A lmini had been verbally warned by an official from the Directorate for Personnel in Brussels that he would-receive Mr Bodson's letter of 20 January relating to his retirement. Furthermore, in his reply to Mr Bodson Mr Ahnini pointed out that he considered a period of reflexion to be necessary. (b) The excessive brevity or the period is not the only reason which leads me to consider that Mr Almini was not enabled effectively to make his observations. In fact, the only reasons given to him as motivating the Commission's intention to retire him were on the one hand the rules relating to the appointment of the Director of the Office for Publications and on the other hand the reorganization of Directorate-General DC. In its decision the Commission however also refers to a quite different ground. There one reads in fact that the Commission ‘finds that the tasks entrusted to the different directorates’ (of the Directorate-General for Personnel and Administration) ‘as well as the number and diversity of the staff to be controlled call for special skills which the Commission considers are different from those of Mr Almini’. Mr Almini was never given an opportunity of presenting his comments on this point as he could have done in particular by c alling on the evidence of his former superiors. I therefore consider that on two grounds Mr Almini was deprived of the safeguards from which he should have benefited and that for this reason alone the contested decision must be annulled.