ddrg/super_eurlex huggingface dataset:
Staff case summary



Staff case summary

Summary

Officials – Promotion – Complaint by an unsuccessful promotion candidate – Decision to reject – Total absence of statement of reasons

(Staff Regulations, Arts 25, second para., 45 and 90(2))

Although the appointing authority is not under an obligation to provide unsuccessful candidates with reasons for its decision on promotion, it must, on the other hand, give reasons for its decision to reject a complaint lodged by an official who has not been promoted, the statement of grounds for such a decision being deemed to be the same as the statement of reasons for the decision against which the complaint was directed, so that consideration of the grounds of the one overlaps with that of the other.

The total absence of a statement of reasons before an action is brought cannot be remedied by explanations provided by the appointing authority after the action has been initiated. At that stage, such explanations no longer fulfil their function, which is to enable the party concerned to determine whether it is appropriate to bring an action and to enable the court to check the correctness of the reasons stated. Moreover, the possibility of remedying the total absence of a statement of reasons after an action has been initiated would prejudice the rights of the defence, since the applicant would be deprived of the opportunity to present his pleas against the statement of reasons, of which he would have no knowledge until after the action was brought. The principle that parties should be equal before the Community judicature would be undermined.

(see paras 27-28)

See:

188/73 Grassi v Council [1974] ECR 1099, para. 13; 121/76 Moli v Commission [1977] ECR 1971, para. 12; 75/77 Mollet v Commission [1978] ECR 897, para. 12; 195/80 Michel v Parliament [1981] ECR 2861, para. 22; C-343/87 Culin v Commission [1990] ECR I‑225, paras 13 and 15; C-150/03 P Hectors v Parliament [2004] ECR I‑8691, para. 50

T-52/90 Volger v Parliament [1992] ECR II‑121, paras 40 and 41; T-117/01 Roman Parra v Commission [2002] ECR-SC I-A-27 and II‑121, para. 32; T-66/05 Sack v Commission [2007] ECR-SC I-A-0000, para. 66, currently the subject of an appeal before the Court of Justice, C‑38/08 P
JUDGMENT OF THE CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(Second Chamber)

13 December 2007

Case F-27/07

Asa Sundholm

v

Commission of the European Communities

(Civil service – Officials – Appraisal – Career development report – 2001/2002 appraisal – Absence on medical grounds – Enforcement of a judgment of the Court of First Instance – Article 233 EC)

Application: brought under Articles 236 EC and 152 EA, in which Mrs Sundholm seeks annulment of the Commission’s decision of 2 June 2006 establishing her career development report for the period from 1 July 2001 to 31 December 2002, adopted pursuant to the judgment of the Court of First Instance of 20 April 2005 in Case T-86/04 Sundholm v Commission, not published in the ECR.

Held: The action is dismissed. The parties are ordered to bear their own costs.

Summary

1. Officials – Reports procedure – Career development report – Judicial review – Limits

(Staff Regulations, Art. 43)

2. Officials – Reports procedure – Career development report – Duty to state reasons – Scope

(Staff Regulations, Art. 43)

1. It is not for the Tribunal to substitute its assessment for that of the persons responsible for appraising the work of the official under appraisal. The institutions of the Community enjoy a wide discretion in appraising the work of their officials. Value judgements relating to officials in career development reports are not subject to review by the Tribunal except as regards any irregularities of form or manifest errors of fact vitiating the assessments made by the administration or any misuse of power.

(see para. 39)

See:

T-285/04 Andrieu v Commission [2006] ECR-SC I-A-2-161 and II‑A‑2‑775, para. 99; T-249/04 Combescot v Commission [2007] ECR-SC I-A-2-0000 and II-A-2-0000, para. 78

2. Particular care must be taken with the statement of reasons for the career development report in certain situations, particularly where the appeal assessor does not follow the recommendations of the Joint Evaluation Committee, where the career development report includes appraisals which are less favourable than those in a previous report, or where the report is drawn up late and the reporting officer is no longer the immediate superior who was acting as assessor during the period reported on .

(see para. 47)

See:

T-16/03 Ferrer de Moncada v Commission [2004] ECR-SC I‑A‑261 and II‑1163, paras 49, 50, 53 and 54; Combescot v Commission, para. 84
JUDGMENT OF THE CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(Second Chamber)

24 September 2009

Case F-36/08

Arno Schell

v

Commission of the European Communities

(Civil service – Officials – Promotion – Allocation of promotion points by Directors-General – 2007 promotion procedure)

Application: brought under Articles 236 EC and 152 EA, in which Mr Schell seeks annulment of his career development report for the period from 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2006 and of the formal intentions to allocate promotion points adopted by the Director-General under the 2007 promotion procedure.

Held: The action is dismissed. The applicant is ordered to pay all of the costs.

Summary

Officials – Reports procedure – Career development report

(Staff Regulations, Arts 43 and 45)

It cannot be inferred from Article 8(7) of the general implementing provisions for Article 43 of the Staff Regulations, adopted by the Commission, that the administration is under an obligation to conduct a comparative appraisal of officials reported on in order to draw up their career development reports. That provision is to be read in its context. First of all, while Article 43 of the Staff Regulations requires an assessment to be made, in the form of a career development report drawn up at least once every two years, of each official’s ability, efficiency and conduct in the service, the Staff Regulations do not provide for that assessment to be comparative in nature, as required with Article 45 of the Staff Regulations. On the contrary, according to Article 8(5) of the general implementing provisions, the report is to be drawn up, as regards ‘Efficiency’, in the light of objectives to be attained which are specific to each official. Furthermore, the verification mentioned in the first paragraph of Article 8(7) of the general implementing provisions is a preliminary to the concertation provided for in the second paragraph of that article, which is designed to ensure, within each directorate-general, that the appraisal of merits conducted for the purposes of the report is consistent. It follows from the foregoing that the reference to a comparison of merits in the first paragraph of Article 8(7) of the general implementing provisions must be understood as being one of the elements by which the consistency of appraisals may be monitored, rather than as meaning that the career development reports may be drawn up only after the merits of all the officials have been compared.

(see paras 37-39, 41)

See:

F‑42/06 Sundholm v Commission [2007] ECR-SC I‑A‑1‑0000 and II‑A‑1‑0000, para. 31
51

First of all, it is settled case-law that the application of the principle of proportionality in disciplinary matters has two aspects. First, it is for the appointing authority to choose the appropriate penalty where the truth of the matters alleged against the staff member is established, and it is not open to the Courts of the European Union to criticise that choice unless the penalty imposed is disproportionate to the matters alleged against the person concerned. Second, the penalty to be imposed is to be determined on the basis of an overall assessment by the appointing authority of all the concrete facts and matters appertaining to each individual case, since, as regards members of staff at the ECB, its Conditions of Employment do not specify any fixed relationship between the disciplinary penalties listed by them and the various types of misconduct on the part of officials, and do not state the extent to which aggravating or extenuating circumstances are to be taken into account in the choice of penalty. Therefore, the Courts of the European Union are competent to examine all the issues of fact and of law relevant for the purposes of the dispute before it, which implies, in the case of a disciplinary penalty, that it has, inter alia, the power to assess the proportionality between the misconduct and the penalty (judgment of 15 May 2012 in Case T‑184/11 P Nijs v Court of Auditors, paragraph 85).
Staff case summary



Staff case summary

Summary

1. Officials — Recruitment — Competitions — Legal nature of the relationship between the successful candidate and the institution organising an open competition — Applicability of a national law — Not included

(Staff Regulations, Art. 27)

2. Officials — Equal treatment — Request to extend the validity of a reserve list owing to the maternity leave and parental leave of a successful candidate — Rejection — Discrimination on the ground of sex — None

(European Parliament and Council Directive 2006/54; Council Directives 92/85 and 96/34)

1. The relationship between the institutions and the successful candidates in a competition organised in application of Article 27 of the Staff Regulations cannot be governed by the provisions of a national law.

(see para. 45)

2. It does not follow from the provisions of EU law governing maternity leave and parental leave that a person who has exercised his right to one or other of those types of leave could require a potential employer to suspend in regard to him the procedures in which he is involved. Consequently, a successful candidate in a competition cannot maintain that the exercise of those rights objectively prevented him from taking steps to be recruited by an EU institution.

In that regard, unless there are particular medical circumstances connected with pregnancy or confinement, the fact that a woman is on maternity leave does not constitute a barrier to her taking part in a recruitment procedure. By limiting to two weeks around the confinement the period during which a woman is required not to work, the Union legislature did not mean to create a presumption that it is impossible for the person concerned to take any work-related action during the remaining weeks of maternity leave. Although a woman is entitled to decide to devote herself exclusively to her child during her maternity leave, the fact none the less remains that she cannot use her personal choice as a pretext for claiming to have been the victim of discrimination on the ground of sex.

Likewise, as regards parental leave, the fact that a person exercises his or her right to that type of leave does not prevent him or her from taking part in a recruitment procedure within the Union. That is particularly so because, as the option to take parental leave is open to both women and men, the exercise by a person of his or her right to parental leave cannot give rise to direct discrimination on the ground of sex.

(see paras 46, 49-53, 55)

See:

30 June 1998, C‑394/96 Brown , para. 22; 27 October 1998, C‑411/96 Boyle and Others , para. 58; 19 November 1998, C‑66/96 Høj Pedersen and Others , para. 33; 18 March 2004, C‑342/01 Merino Gómez , para. 32; 18 November 2004, C‑284/02 Sass , para. 32
JUDGMENT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(First Chamber)

12 December 2013

Mark Hall

v

European Commission

and

European Police College (CEPOL)

‛Civil service — Remuneration — Family allowances — Dependent child allowance — Education allowance — Children of applicant’s wife not living at the home of the couple — Conditions for granting’

Application:

under Article 270 TFEU, applicable to the EAEC Treaty pursuant to Article 106a thereof, in which Mr Hall seeks annulment of the implied decision of 25 March 2011 and of the express decision of 11 July 2011 of the European Commission rejecting his application for dependent child and education allowances for his wife’s three children for the period in which they were still living in the Philippines and compensation for the material and non-material damage incurred as a result of the non-payment of those allowances.

Held:

The action is dismissed as inadmissible, in so far as it is directed against the European Police College. The implied decision of 25 March 2011 and the express decision of 11 July 2011 of the European Commission rejecting the application for dependent child and education allowances for the three children of Mr Hall’s wife, for the period in which they were still living in the Philippines, are annulled. The action brought against the European Commission is dismissed as to the remainder. The European Commission is to bear its own costs and is ordered to pay the costs incurred by Mr Hall. Mr Hall is ordered to pay the costs incurred by the European Police College.

Summary

Officials — Remuneration — Family allowances — Dependent child allowance — Conditions for granting — Actual maintenance — Administration’s circumscribed powers

(Staff Regulations, Annex VII, Art. 2)

Article 2(3) and (5) of Annex VII to the Staff Regulations concern cases where entitlement to the dependent child allowance for an official’s child arises automatically by reason of the fact that it is presumed in those provisions that the child referred to in them is, solely on account of his being a minor, a student, a sick person or an invalid, in fact dependent on the official. It does not follow, however, that the institution is exempt from the obligation to verify that the condition of actual maintenance of the child by the official, laid down in Article 2(2) of Annex VII to the Staff Regulations, is satisfied. It is only if this condition is fulfilled that it can be considered that the powers of the appointing authority are circumscribed, in the three cases referred to in Article 2(3)(a) and (b) and Article 2(5) of that annex. A minor child cannot be regarded as dependent on the official concerned or give rise to entitlement to dependent child allowance when another person, public or private, fully provides for his actual maintenance.

(see paras 39-41)

See:

28 November 1991, C‑132/90 P Schwedler v Parliament, paras 19 to 24; 7 May 1992, C‑70/91 P Council v Brems, para. 5

11 July 2000, T‑134/99 Skrzypek v Commission, para. 66
JUDGMENT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(First Chamber)

5 November 2013

Carlo De Nicola

v

European Investment Bank (EIB)

‛Civil service — Compliance with a judgment — Costs — Reimbursement of costs — Reimbursement of the sum paid by way of recoverable costs following a judgment annulling in part the judgment by which the applicant was ordered to pay those costs’

Application:

under Article 270 TFEU, applicable to the EAEC Treaty pursuant to Article 106a thereof, in which Mr De Nicola requests the Tribunal to annul the refusal of the European Investment Bank (EIB) to reimburse the costs paid on the basis of a judgment of the Tribunal which was subsequently annulled by the General Court of the European Union.

Held:

The decisions of 4 and 25 May 2012 of the European Investment Bank are annulled. The European Investment bank is ordered to pay Mr De Nicola the sum of EUR 6 000, with compensatory interest as from 29 April 2012. The compensatory interest rate must be calculated on the basis of the rate set by the European Central Bank for its principal refinancing operations applicable over the period concerned, increased by two points. The remainder of the application is dismissed. The European Investment Bank is to bear its own costs and is ordered to pay the costs incurred by Mr De Nicola.

Summary

Judicial proceedings — Costs — Reimbursement of a sum paid by way of recoverable costs following a judgment annulling in part the judgment by which the applicant was ordered to pay those costs

(Rules of Procedure of the Civil Service Tribunal, Art. 115)

Under Article 115 of the Rules of Procedure of the Civil Service Tribunal, where the General Court of the European Union annuls a judgment or an order of the Tribunal and refers the case back to it, the Tribunal must, in the decision ending the proceedings, make an order as to the costs relating, first, to the proceedings instituted before it and, second, to the proceedings on the appeal before the General Court.

That provision demonstrates that the annulment, albeit in part, by the General Court of a judgment or order of the Tribunal has the effect of annulling the provisions by which the Tribunal, in that judgment or order, made an order as to costs.

Consequently, it was for the institution to agree to the applicant’s request for reimbursement of the sum paid by way of recoverable costs.

(see paras 23-24, 27)
JUDGMENT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(Single judge)

21 July 2016

CC

v

European Parliament

‛Civil service — Referral back to the Tribunal after setting aside — Action for damages — Non-contractual liability — Errors in the management of the list of suitable candidates — Open competition — Competition notice EUR/A/151/98 — Equal treatment — Measures for compliance with the judgment — European Ombudsman’s investigation’

Application:

under Article 270 TFEU, applicable to the EAEC Treaty pursuant to Article 106a thereof, in which CC seeks compensation for the harm caused to her by the various errors committed by the European Parliament in the management of the list of suitable candidates drawn up following open competition EUR/A/151/98 and on which she had been placed following the decision of the Director General for Personnel of the European Parliament of 17 May 2005.

Held:

The European Parliament is to pay CC the sum of EUR 12000. The application is dismissed as to the remainder. The European Parliament is to bear its own costs and is ordered to pay the costs incurred by CC in Cases F‑9/12, T‑457/13 P and F‑9/12 RENV.

Summary

EU law — Principles — Equal treatment — Concept — Length of the validity of a list of suitable candidates varying from one successful candidate in a competition to another Officials — Non-contractual liability of the institutions — Conditions — Unlawfulness — Damage — Causal link — Concept — Loss of the opportunity to be recruited — Burden of proof (Art. 340(2) TFEU)
22

It should be noted in that regard that the legality of a measure is to be assessed on the basis of the facts and the law as they stood at the time of the measure’s adoption (judgments of 11 July 2007 in Case T‑58/05 Centeno Mediavilla and Others v Commission, paragraph 151, and of 29 September 2011 in Case F‑70/05 Mische v Commission, paragraph 70). The 2011 GIP were adopted and entered into force on 2 March 2011 and were therefore applicable at the time the contested decision was taken on 6 March 2012. At that date the 2011 GIP had repealed the 2004 GIP. The 2004 GIP were applicable when the CEI was published and on 14 June 2010 when the admission conditions needed to be met. However, the AECE did not at that time take any final decision as to whether the applicant had the appropriate experience required for recruitment to function group III. Moreover, the transitional provisions contained in Article 14 of the 2011 GIP governed the questions of persons who had passed a selection procedure prior to the entry into force of those GIP and of contracts in force, the difficulty arising in connection with the employment of staff on the basis of a derogating provision contained in the 2004 GIP, the situation of young experts in the delegations and the use of grant holders.
JUDGMENT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(Single Judge)

18 December 2015

Carlo De Nicola

v

European Investment Bank (EIB)

‛Civil service — EIB staff — Appraisal — 2012 appraisal report — Unlawfulness of the decision of the Appeals Committee — No need to adjudicate’

Application:

under Article 270 TFEU, in which Mr De Nicola seeks, in particular, first, annulment of the decision of the Appeals Committee (‘the Appeals Committee’) of the European Investment Bank (EIB, or ‘the Bank’) of 23 October 2013 rejecting his internal appeal seeking the annulment and amendment of his appraisal report for 2012, second, annulment of his appraisal report for 2012, third, annulment of all ‘connected, consequent and prior acts’, fourth, an order that the EIB pay compensation for the material and non-material harm which he considers he has suffered, and, fifth, in the alternative, a finding that he suffered harassment.

Held:

The decision of the Appeals Committee of the European Investment Bank of 23 October 2013 is annulled. There is no need to adjudicate on the pleas seeking annulment of the appraisal report relating to 2012 and all connected, consequent and prior acts. The remainder of the action is dismissed. The European Investment Bank is to bear its own costs and is ordered to pay the costs incurred by Mr De Nicola.

Summary

Officials — Staff of the European Investment Bank — Reports procedure — Appraisal report — Challenge before the Appeals Committee of the EIB — Scope of the Appeals Committee’s review (Staff Regulations of the European Investment Bank, Art. 22) Actions brought by officials — Staff of the European Investment Bank — Action directed against a decision of the Appeals Committee concerning appraisal — Judicial review — Scope (Staff Regulations of the European Investment Bank, Art. 22) Actions brought by officials — Staff of the European Investment Bank — Judgment annulling a measure — Effects — Obligation to implement — Judgment annulling a decision of the Appeals Committee on an appraisal report — Obligation for the EIB to re-submit to the Committee the challenge brought by the person who lodged the internal appeal (Art. 266 TFEU)