JUDGMENT OF THE CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(First Chamber)

28 October 2010

Case F-96/08

Maria Concetta Cerafogli

v

European Central Bank (ECB)

(Civil service — ECB staff — Remuneration — Additional increase in salary — Ad personam promotion — Consultation with Staff Committee to determine the criteria for granting additional increases in salary)

Application: brought under Article 36.2 of the Protocol on the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank, annexed to the EC Treaty, in which Ms Cerafogli essentially seeks annulment of the ECB’s decision not to award her, for 2008, an additional increase in salary and an ad personam promotion.

Held: The decision by which the ECB refused to grant the applicant an additional increase in salary for 2008 is annulled. The ECB is ordered to pay the applicant the sum of EUR 3 000. The remainder of the action is dismissed. The ECB is ordered to pay all of the costs.

Summary

1. Officials — Staff of the European Central Bank — Representation — Staff Committee — Mandatory consultation — Scope

(Conditions of Employment for Staff of the European Central Bank, Arts 45 and 46)

2. Officials — Staff of the European Central Bank — Representation — Staff Committee — Mandatory consultation — Scope — Raison d’être

(Conditions of Employment for Staff of the European Central Bank, Art. 46)

3. Officials — Actions — Actions for damages — Annulment of the illegal act in dispute — Non-material damage separable from the illegal act not capable of being entirely remedied by annulment

(Staff Regulations, Art. 91)

1. Article 46 of the Conditions of Employment for Staff of the European Central Bank does not confine the obligation to consult the Staff Committee to the amendment of ‘legislative acts’, but imposes that obligation to consult in the cases of any measure dealing either with the service rules themselves or with ‘matters’ relating to those rules and connected with any of the fields referred to in Article 45 of those Conditions of Employment, including staff remuneration.

A policy document adopted by the administration and fixing precise criteria for the granting of additional increases in salary to staff members constitutes, in the light of its nature and scope, a measure of general application concerning staff remuneration and is therefore covered by the obligation to consult flowing from Articles 45 and 46 of the Conditions of Employment. Those provisions require the European Central Bank, on pain of illegality, to consult the Staff Committee prior to adopting that document.

(see paras 47, 51-53)

See:

T-63/02 Cerafogli and Poloni v ECB [2003] ECR II-4929, para. 21

2. Consultation of the Staff Committee under Article 46 of the Conditions of Employment for Staff of the European Central Bank amounts merely to a right to be heard. Consequently, it is one of the most modest forms of participation in a decision-making process, since under no circumstances does it involve any obligation for the administration to act upon the observations made by the Staff Committee in the course of the consultation. That being so, unless it is to undermine the effectiveness of the obligation to consult, the administration must comply with that obligation whenever consultation of the Staff Committee is liable to have an influence on the substance of the measure to be adopted.

Moreover, the scope of the obligation to consult the Staff Committee, as imposed by the legislature, must be assessed in the light of its objectives. First, that consultation is intended to afford all members of staff, through that committee as representative of their shared interests, the opportunity to be heard prior to the adoption or amendment of acts of general application which concern them. Second, compliance with that obligation is in the interests both of the various staff members and of the administration in that it serves to avoid the need for each member of staff to raise, by way of an individual administrative procedure, the existence of possible errors. By the same token, such consultation, being such as to prevent the submission of a series of individual applications pursuing the same grievance, also serves the principle of sound administration.

(see paras 49-50)

See:

T-192/99 Dunnett and Others v EIB [2001] ECR II-813, para. 90

3. The annulment of an unlawful act may in itself constitute appropriate and, in principle, sufficient reparation for any non-material damage that act may have caused, unless the applicant demonstrates that he has suffered non-material damage separable from the illegality of the act justifying its annulment and not capable of being entirely remedied by that annulment.

(see para. 75)

See:

T-10/02 Girardot v Commission [2006] ECR-SC I-A-2-129 and II-A-2-609, para. 131 and the case-law cited therein