JUDGMENT OF THE CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(First Chamber)

7 June 2011

Case F-84/09

Emmanuel Larue and Olivier Seigneur

v

European Central Bank (ECB)

(Civil service — Staff of the ECB — Pay — General adjustment to salaries — Disregard of the method of calculation)

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 Mr Larue and Mr Seigneur seek annulment of their pay slips for January 2009 and an order for the ECB to pay them damages.

Held: The applicants’ pay slips for the month of January 2009 are annulled. The remainder of the action is dismissed. The European Central Bank is ordered to bear all the costs.

Summary

1. Officials — Actions — Action against a decision rejecting a complaint — Admissibility

(Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91)

2. Officials — Staff of the European Central Bank — Remuneration — Method of calculating the annual adjustment in remuneration — Obligations arising for the Bank

(Protocol on the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank, Art. 14(3); Conditions of Employment for Staff of the European Central Bank, Art. 13 )

3. Officials — Actions — Judgment annulling a measure — Effects — Obligation to implement — Fair compensation for the disadvantage to the applicant resulting from the annulled measure

(Art. 266 TFEU)

1. Claims directed, in so far as is necessary, against decisions dismissing applications for pre-litigation review and rejecting complaints need not be examined independently since, as those decisions have no independent content, the only effect of the claims is to bring before the Union judicature the acts adversely affecting the applicants against which the application for pre-litigation review was submitted.

(see para. 35)

See:

17 January 1989, 293/87 Vainker v Parliament, para. 8

18 May 2006, F-13/05 Corvoisier and Others v ECB, para. 25

2. Whereas, under Article 13 of the Conditions of Employment for Staff of the European Central Bank, the Bank draws up, for general staff salary adjustments, a method of calculation based on the taking into account of salary changes in certain comparator organisations, it follows that it is required, first, to ask the comparator organisations for all relevant information on changes in the gross annual salaries of their staff, and second, to determine, on the basis of that information, the general salary adjustments for the Bank’s staff for the year in question. Furthermore, although it is not for the Bank, as a general rule, to dispute the accuracy of the figures forwarded by the comparator organisations, since that information is necessarily complex, it does, however, fall within the Bank’s competence to give the figures an appropriate legal characterisation in the light of the criteria laid down in its internal rules. Lastly, in a particular situation where the Staff Committee’s observations suggest that the figures forwarded by the comparator organisations do not faithfully reflect the change in their staff’s gross salaries, as provided for in the internal rules, the Bank is obliged to request from those organisations any additional information required in order to ensure compliance with the provisions of Article 14(3) of the Protocol on the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank.

(see para. 50)

3. Under Article 266 TFEU, it is for the institution concerned to take the measures necessary to comply with a judgment annulling a measure and, in particular, to adopt, while observing the principle of legality, any measure which is such as to compensate fairly for the disadvantage resulting for the applicants from the annulled measures, without prejudice to the possibility for the applicants to bring an action at a later stage against the measures adopted by that institution to comply with that judgment.

(see para. 64)

See:

15 September 2005, T-132/03 Casini v Commission, para. 98

24 June 2008, F-15/05 Andres and Others v ECB, para. 132