ORDER OF THE GENERAL COURT (Appeal Chamber)

21 June 2011

Case T-452/09 P

Eckehard Rosenbaum

v

European Commission

(Appeal — Civil service — Officials — Classification in grade at the time of recruitment — Taking account of the professional experience of the person concerned — Article 31 of the Staff Regulations — Obligation to state reasons)

Appeal: brought against the judgment of the Civil Service Tribunal of the European Union (Second Chamber) of 10 September 2009 in Case F-9/08 Rosenbaum v Commission [2009] ECR-SC I-A-1-299 and II-A-1-1617, asking for that judgment to be set aside.

Held: The appeal is dismissed. Mr Eckehard Rosenbaum is to bear his own costs and to pay those incurred by the European Commission in the present instance. The Council of the European Union, which intervened at first instance in support of the European Commission, is to bear its own costs.

Summary

1. Appeals — Pleas in law — Inadequate statement of reasons — Recourse by the Civil Service Tribunal to an implied statement of reasons — Lawfulness — Conditions

(Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 36 and Annex I, Art. 7(1))

2. Procedure — Statement of reasons for judgments — Scope

(Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 36 and Annex I, Art. 7(1))

3. Appeals — Pleas in law — Review by the General Court of the assessment of the evidence by the Civil Service Tribunal — Possible only where the clear sense of the evidence has been distorted

(Statute of the Court of Justice, Annex I, Art. 11(1))

4. Appeals — Pleas in law — Plea directed against the Civil Service Tribunal’s decision on costs — Inadmissible where all other pleas rejected

(Statute of the Court of Justice, Annex I, Art. 11(2))

1. The obligation to state reasons does not require the Civil Service Tribunal to provide an account that follows exhaustively and point by point all the reasoning articulated by the parties to the case. The reasoning may therefore be implicit on condition that it enables the persons concerned to know why the decision was taken and provides the competent court with sufficient material for it to exercise its power of review.

(see para. 26)

See: C-204/00 P, C-205/00 P, C-211/00 P, C-213/00 P, C-217/00 P and C-219/00 P Aalborg Portland and Others v Commission [2004] ECR I-123, para. 372; C-3/06 P Groupe Danone v Commission [2007] ECR I-1331, para. 46

2. While the obligation of the Civil Service Tribunal to give reasons for its decisions does not go so far as to require it to respond in detail to every argument advanced by the parties, particularly where the arguments were not sufficiently clear and precise and were not based on detailed evidence, it does, at the very least, require it to examine all the infringements of law alleged before it.

(see para. 35)

See: judgment of 8 June 2009 in T-498/07 P Krcova v Court of Justice, not published in the ECR, paras 34 and 35 and the case-law cited therein

3. The Civil Service Tribunal is the sole judge of any need to supplement the information available to it in respect of the cases before it. Whether or not the evidence before it is sufficient is a matter to be appraised by that court alone and is not open to review by the General Court on appeal, except where that evidence produced before the Civil Service Tribunal has been distorted or the inaccuracy of the Tribunal’s findings is apparent from the documents in the case-file.

(see para. 41)

See: C-315/99 P Ismeri Europa v Court of Auditors [2001] ECR I-5281, para. 19 and the case-law cited therein

4. It is clear from Article 11(2) of Annex I to the Statute of the Court of Justice that no appeal may lie regarding only the amount of the costs or the party ordered to pay them. It follows that, where all the other pleas put forward in an appeal against a decision of the Civil Service Tribunal have been rejected, heads of claim regarding the alleged unlawfulness of the Tribunal’s decision on costs must be dismissed as inadmissible.

(see para. 46)

See: T-375/08 P Nijs v Court of Auditors [2009] ECR-SC I-B-1-65 and II-B-1-413, para. 71 and the case-law cited therein