A notice fixing pension rights was adopted following reconsideration of the applicants’ legal situation and on the basis of new facts cannot be regarded as being a purely confirmatory act of a previous notice of fixing of pension rights. On the contrary, that notice constitutes an act which, in acting as a substitute for the preceding acts, brings about a distinct change in the applicants’ legal situation, affects their interests directly and immediately and therefore affects them adversely within the meaning of Article 90(2) and Article 91 of the Staff Regulations.

Article 81a of the Staff Regulations covers both the survivor’s pension and the orphan’s pension. Thus, the method of calculation of pension entitlements applied by the institution, by which the orphan’s pensions in the actual income subject to the cap provided for in Article 81a are included, complies with that provision.

Principally, the orphan’s pensions are provided for in Article 80 of the Staff Regulations, which is part of Title V, Chapter 3, of the Staff Regulations, entitled ‘Pensions and invalidity allowance’. Those pensions are genuine pensions and are subject as such to the pension scheme referred to in the Staff Regulations.

Furthermore, the detailed rules for the calculation of orphan’s pensions are laid down in Chapter 4, Article 21, of Annex VIII to the Staff Regulations, under the reference in Article 84 of the Staff Regulations, and that that chapter is entitled ‘Survivor’s pension’. Such an observation shows that the expression ‘survivor’s pension’ is used by the legislature to identify not only the pension of the surviving spouse of the deceased official, in other words the survivor’s pension in the strict sense of the term, but also provisions concerning the orphan’s pensions. Thus, although certain provisions refer explicitly to orphan’s pensions, that does not mean that other provisions that do not refer to them explicitly may not be applied to them, as they are genuine pensions which are, by virtue of that fact, subject to the provisions of the Staff Regulations that are applicable generally to pensions.

Moreover, since Article 81a of the Staff Regulations is one of the final provisions of Title V, Chapter 3, of the Staff Regulations and is among the provisions applicable to pensions, of which the pensions provided for in Article 80 form a part, Article 81a cannot be interpreted as excluding orphan’s pensions. That provision’s use of the expression ‘survivor’s pensions’ in the plural must be construed as referring to any type of ‘pensions’, the triggering factor for which is the death of an official, which is the case not only for the survivor’s pension, but also for the orphan’s pension. Moreover, under the first to third paragraphs of Article 80 of the Staff Regulations and Article 21 of Annex VIII to the Staff Regulations, the survivor’s pension and the orphan’s pension are linked, as the amount of the latter is contingent on the amount of the former.

In any event, the underlying purpose of the orphan’s pension, which is to compensate for the costs incurred by the surviving official for the maintenance of dependent children, contributes towards achieving the objective of fostering financial autonomy for those children. To the extent that the orphan’s pension enables the costs of maintaining the children to be offset, it is part of the family income and does not escape the rule proscribing enrichment as a result of the death of a parent who is also an official, compliance with which rule is ensured by the application of the cap provided for in Article 81a of the Staff Regulations.

(see paras 94-96, 103, 104)