JUDGMENT OF THE GENERAL COURT (Appeal Chamber)

6 February 2015

Case T‑7/14 P

BQ

v

Court of Auditors of the European Union

(Appeal — Civil service — Officials — Staff report — Psychological harassment — Dismissal in part of the action for compensation at first instance — Distortion of the facts — Duty of the Civil Service Tribunal to state reasons — Proportionality — Allocation of costs)

Appeal: against the judgment of the European Union Civil Service Tribunal (Third Chamber) of 23 October 2013 in BQ v Court of Auditors (F‑39/12, ECR-SC, EU:F:2013:158) seeking to have that judgment set aside.

Held: The appeal is dismissed. Mr BQ is to bear, in the present instance, his own costs and is ordered to pay those incurred by the Court of Auditors of the European Union.

Summary

Officials — Obligation of administration to provide assistance — Conditions — Scope

(Staff Regulations, Art. 24, first para.)

By reason of the duty to provide assistance laid down in the first paragraph of Article 24 of the Staff Regulations, the administration must, when faced with an incident which is incompatible with the good order and tranquillity of the service, intervene with all the necessary vigour and respond with the rapidity and solicitude required by the circumstances of the case with a view to establishing the facts and taking the appropriate action in full knowledge of the facts. To that end, it is sufficient that an official who is seeking the protection of his institution provide at least some evidence of the reality of attacks of which he claims to have been the victim. When such evidence is provided, the institution concerned is under an obligation to take the necessary measures, in particular to undertake an administrative inquiry, with the cooperation of the complainant, to determine the facts which gave rise to the complaint.

Furthermore, where the administration receives a request for assistance from an official, pursuant to the first paragraph of Article 24 of the Staff Regulations, it is also required, under the duty of protection imposed on it by that article, to take the appropriate preventive measures, such as the reassignment or provisional transfer of the victim, in order to protect him against a repetition of the alleged conduct during the period required for the administrative inquiry.

In that connection, the existence of a conflictual relationship between officials is not sufficient, in itself, to establish that the institution concerned is at fault. Only the institution’s failure to take action in a harmful situation might constitute such a fault. Likewise, the opinions of medical experts, even if based on factors other than the description given to them by the official concerned of his working conditions, are not such as to establish, in themselves, the existence in law of harassment or of the institution’s negligence in the light of its duty to provide assistance.

(see paras 33, 34, 37, 49)

See:

Judgments of 14 June 1979 in V v Commission, 18/78, ECR, EU:C:1979:154, para. 16, and 26 January 1989 in Koutchoumoff v Commission, 224/87, ECR, EU:C:1989:38, paras 15 and 16

Judgments of 5 December 2000 in Campogrande v Commission, T‑136/98, ECR-SC, EU:T:2000:281, para. 55, and 9 March 2005 in L v Commission, T‑254/02, ECR-SC, EU:T:2005:88, para. 84 and the case-law cited therein