3.

One may now examine Mr Le Schacht's claims in the light of all the provisions governing his status. The result seems to me to be the same whether he bases them on Article 62 of the General Regulations of 1956 or on Article 12 of Annex VIII to the Staff Regulations of 1962. In both cases these provisions taken together only appear to me to be capable of being applied when an official finally leaves not merely the institution to which he belongs but the Communities. This is what was stated in respect of the severance grant by your judgment in the Campolongo case, when you ruled that the ‘severance’ referred to in Article 62(1) of the General Regulations must ‘presumably be understood as meaning severance from the Community service’. And this becomes even clearer if one refers to Article 12 of Annex VIII which speaks of an official ‘whose service terminates’. This ‘severance’, which is the main question with regard to the articles in dispute, as you have interpreted it determines not only the severance grant properly so-called (subparagraph (c)) but also in principle the sums in the provident fund (subparagraphs (a) and (b)). It is only when an official breaks the ties binding him to one Community without immediately forming fresh ties with another that he is entitled to the benefit of these options. One then sees the limited scope to be attributed to the provision of Article 52 of the General Regulations of 1956, repeated in Article 4 of Annex VIII, on the choice open to an official who after leaving the service of an institution takes up active employment again: it presupposes that the person concerned has ceased to belong to ‘the services of the Communities’. This is the only logical reason justifying any derogation from the general principle of the continuity of a career and of the taking into account of all periods of service for calculating pensions. The interpretation appears to me to be confirmed by the provisions applicable to a seconded official (Article 8 of the ECSC Staff Regulations of 1962 and Article 8 of hte EEC-EAEC Staff Regulations). These articles provide that such an official may after six months apply to be transferred and, if consent is forthcoming, he shall be deemed to have served his entire service career in the Community in the institution to which he is transferred. But they go on to state that he shall not receive by virtue of such transfer any of the financial benefits which an official is entitled to receive on termination of service. Against this, Mr De Schlacht advances the solution adopted by your judgment in the Campolongo case for payment of the sums standing to the credit of that official's account in the provident fund. I do not dream for a moment of contesting that solution, but I do think that it is explained by the circumstances of the case — which were very different from those of the present case — and that the applicant is wrong in any event in attributing to it the force of a ‘leading case’. Mr Campolongo resigned from the ECSC to enter the service of the European Investment Bank, a body created, it is true, by the Treaty of Rome and whose Statute forms the subject-matter of a protocol annexed thereto, but which in no way constitutes an ‘institution’, within the proper meaning of the word, of the EEC. Consequently, its staff is completely unaffected by the Staff Regulations of Officials of the EEC and in particular by the pension scheme to which such officials are compulsorily subject, just as disputes between it and its staff do not fall within your jurisdiction. In those circumstances one cannot talk of the continuity of a career or of the taking into account of all years of service for the constitution of a single pension and it is understandable that you remarked at that time that the person concerned had become subject to a new social security scheme the details of which we are still unaware of. From this point of view, his position was no different from that of an official who left the Community to enter a private bank, and therefore has nothing in common with the position of Mr De Schacht who changed from an institution of one Community to another Community, but continued his previous career in his new post and is subject to an essentially identical pension scheme even though there is no agreement merging the provident funds (although the Joint Regulation of 10 July 1963 was concerned with laying down detailed rules for the payment of pensions for officials who had served part of their career with the ECSC, and the apportionment of the resulting financial burden between the ECSC pension funds and the budgets of the EEC and the EAEC). One last argument remains, to which Mr De Schacht repeatedly returned and which stems from the solution adopted in the case of one of his former colleagues in the Secretariat of the Council of the ECSC. This official, who changed to the service of the EEC Commission after a career similar to his, nevertheless obtained payment of the sums standing to the credit of his account in the provident fund. The file does not enable it to be established whether the applicant's allegations are correct, but I do not think that they supply any reason for calling for corroboration or further particulars. The only point submitted to you is in fact whether, by refusing Mr De Schacht payment of the sums standing to the credit of his account in the provident fund, the Council misconstrued the provisions of the Staff Regulations. This is purely a question of law and the answer depends on the interpretation to be given to the Staff Regulations and not on the application of them — rightly or wrongly — in other cases.