2.

By an application lodged on 18 May 1984, Mr Williams claimed that the Court should: (a) annul the decision of 10 November 1983 reclassifying him and the decision of 16 March 1984 rejecting his complaint; (b) declare that the Court of Auditors was bound to observe all the criteria laid down in the decision of 21 February 1980, and in particular Article 4 thereof. The applicant puts forward a single submission in support of his claim: namely, that the Court of Auditors has not ‘faithfully complied with the judgment of 6 October 1982’. I will say at once that I find that submission rather general, and the supporting arguments put forward by Mr Williams' lawyer seem to me to be no less vague. In reality the application displays the conviction that the judgment of the Court entitled the applicant to a complete reconstruction of his career. Indeed, he asks that ‘the Court of Auditors should eliminate the discrimination between the temporary servants taken on from the Audit Board (such as himself) and the newly recruited officials’. However, it must be observed that, in making that claim, Mr Williams forgets that he has brought an action for the annulment of a decision adopted by the administration and that, in deciding such an action, the Court may not encroach upon the powers attributed to the appointing authority or substitute itself for that authority. The application must therefore be placed in its natural context: it will then be apparent that it is intended to obtain a declaration that the Court of Auditors has failed to comply with the obligations imposed upon it in the judgment of 6 October 1982 and thus to obtain the annulment of the decision reclassifying Mr Williams. Seen in that light, the applicant's submission may be analysed as follows: the institution — he seems to be saying — did not apply Article 4 of the General Decision of 21 February 1980. But was the Court of Auditors obliged to take Article 4 into account? And if it was, is it true that that provision was not correctly applied in this case? Those two questions must now be answered. As regards the assignment of step to newly appointed officials, the aforesaid General Decision provided for two separate situations: that of candidates recruited from outside the Community and that of persons who at the time of appointment were already members of the temporary staff. In relation to external candidates, Article 3 provides, in terms largely borrowed from Article 32 of the Staff Regulations of Officials, that ‘in consideration of a candidate's professional experience which exceeds the length of that taken into account for determining his grade of appointment, the appointing authority shall allow additional seniority’. For Grades A 7 to A 5, such additional seniority must not exceed 48 months, that is to say, two steps. Article 4, on the other hand, provides that ‘a member of the temporary staff appointed to a post in the same career bracket and placed in the same grade shall, on the date of his appointment as probationer, be entitled to the seniority acquired during his period of employment as a member of the temporary staff’. In implementing the judgment of the Court, the Court of Auditors decided that, since it was a case of ‘discrimination between a transferred official and a newly appointed official’, the reclassification of Mr Williams should, in accordance with Article 3 of the Decision and Article 32 of the Staff Regulations, ‘result in the granting of additional seniority not exceeding 48 months’. The applicant, however, considers that his seniority in step should be calculated, in accordance with Article 4, as from the date of his engagement as a temporary servant with the Audit Board. On that basis he claims that on 12 May 1980 his correct classification was Grade A 6, Step 5, and the discrimination of which he has been a victim will not, in his view, be entirely eliminated until that has been recognized.