Keywords

Summary



Keywords

1. Officials — Staff of the European Central Bank — Pay — Annual salary adjustment — Consultation of the Staff Committee — Obligation of the administration — (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 — Consultation mandatory — Justification — (Conditions of Employment for Staff of the European Central Bank, Art. 46)

3. Officials — Staff of the European Central Bank — Pay — Method of calculation for general salary adjustment — Criteria — Discretion of the administration — Judicial review — Limits — (Conditions of Employment for Staff of the European Central Bank, Art. 13)

4. Officials — Staff of the European Central Bank — Actions — Subject-matter — Issue of directions to the administration — Inadmissible — Dispute of a financial nature — Unlimited jurisdiction — (Conditions of Employment for Staff of the European Central Bank, Art. 42)

Summary

1. Article 46 of the Conditions of Employment for Staff of the European Central Bank must be interpreted as meaning that the Staff Committee must be consulted in the case of any measure dealing with the service rules and connected with any of the fields referred to in Article 45 of those Conditions of Employment, including staff remuneration. Unless it is to undermine the effectiveness of that obligation, the administration must comply with it whenever consultation of the Staff Committee is such as to have an influence on the substance of the measure to be adopted.

Thus, the salary adjustment for 2001, which was a measure of general application which affected the remuneration of all staff of the Bank even if it was covered by the method for implementing the general salary adjustments for the years 1999 to 2001, had to be the subject of such consultation.

see paras 20-21, 23, 25, 27, 33

2. The scope of the obligation to consult the Staff Committee, as imposed by Article 46 of the Conditions of Employment for Staff of the European Central Bank, must be assessed in the light of its objectives. First, that consultation is intended to afford all members of staff, through that committee as the representative of their common 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 members of staff 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 para. 24

3. Article 13 of the Conditions of Employment for Staff of the European Central Bank, by providing that the Governing Council, on a proposal from the Executive Board, is to adopt general salary adjustments with effect from 1 July of each year, does not impose any criterion for making the salary adjustments and, in particular, does not provide that those adjustments must take account of changes in the cost of living in the Land of Hesse or in Frankfurt am Main.

Article 13 of the Conditions of Employment has therefore conferred on the Governing Council a wide discretion in this context, the exercise of which the Court of First Instance can declare illegal only where there is a manifest error or a misuse of powers.

However, by providing, in the method of calculation for implementing general salary adjustments, for salary adjustment on the basis of the average trend of salaries paid by the national central banks of the 15 Member States and by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Governing Council has established objectively verifiable criteria the appropriateness of which cannot be called in question by the Community judicature.

see paras 46-49

4. According to the second paragraph of Article 42 of the Conditions of Employment for Staff of the European Central Bank, the jurisdiction of the Court in disputes between the European Central Bank and members of its staff is restricted to the legality of the measure or the decision, unless the dispute is of a financial nature, in which case the Court has unlimited jurisdiction. On the other hand, it is not for the Court to make findings of fact or to address directions to the Bank.

see para. 56