That decision is a measure of general scope and does not involve the adoption of a definitive position by the administration as to the individual situation of the person concerned. Accordingly, it does not constitute a decision affecting that person directly and individually.

Since an official or other servant is not entitled to act in the interests of the law or of the institutions and may put forward, in support of an action, only such claims as relate to him personally, a claim seeking annulment of a decision of an institution laying down provisions implementing Article 30(3) of Annex XIII to the Staff Regulations, as amended by Regulation No 1023/2013, must be dismissed as being manifestly inadmissible, regardless of the fact that the official or other servant concerned sought to challenge that decision in his complaint and the appointing authority rejected that complaint on its merits.

In relation to a decision of the administration to assign some of the institution’s officials to the type of post ‘head of unit or equivalent’ (introduced by Regulation No 1023/2013 amending the Staff Regulations of Officials of the European Union and the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants of the European Union), made pursuant to an internal decision laying down implementing provisions for Article 30(3) of Annex XIII to the Staff Regulations, as amended by that regulation, to the extent that the list of officials it contains does not include an official in grade AD 13, that decision cannot be regarded as a decision of the appointing authority refusing to grant that official the benefit of the derogating provisions in Article 30(3) of Annex XIII to the new Staff Regulations, or as a decision of that authority affecting his career prospects by depriving him of the possibility of being promoted to grade AD 14 under the amended Staff Regulations.

That conclusion is reinforced, first, by the fact that, in the case of an measure of a general nature designed to be implemented by means of a series of individual decisions affecting numerous officials of an institution, the non-application of that general measure to a particular case could not be regarded as a decision, even an implied decision, rejecting a request under Article 90(1) of the Staff Regulations.

Secondly, in relation to promotion, an official who is not included in the annual list of promoted officials may bring a complaint directly against that list since, by reason of the appointing authority’s obligation to carry out an annual promotion exercise, the non-inclusion of the official on that single list signifies that the appointing authority, which is required, annually, to consider the comparative merits of all its officials, has refused to promote the person concerned in the promotion exercise in question, reflecting the fact that a definitive assessment has been made by the appointing authority in relation to the official’s situation.

However, the same does not apply to the derogating provisions of Article 30(3) of Annex XIII to the new Staff Regulations which, moreover, are optional and do not require any consideration of comparative merits such as is referred to in Article 45 of the Staff Regulations. First, in using the terms ‘may be assigned’ in Article 30(3), the EU legislature merely conferred a power on each appointing authority to use or not to use the derogating provisions, while limiting the exercise of that power in terms of time (decisions of the appointing authority being required to be made before 31 December 2015) and number (the total number of officials benefiting from the derogation being limited to 5% of the officials in function group AD on 31 December 2013).

Secondly, the use of the words ‘may identify’, ‘may assign’ and ‘at any time between 1 January 2014 and 31 December 2015’, in the internal decision laying down provisions implementing Article 30(3) of Annex XIII to the amended Staff Regulations, clearly indicates that the appointing authority had not, by that decision, decided to bind itself to use the derogating provisions of Article 30(3) of Annex XIII to the new Staff Regulations, or to do so by means of a single assignment decision.

(see paras 47-51)

Judgment of 16 October 1980 in Hochstrass v Court of Justice, 147/79, EU:C:1980:238, paragraph 3

Judgment of 19 October 2006 in Buendía Sierra v Commission, T‑311/04, EU:T:2006:329, paragraph 108 and the case-law cited therein