Keywords

Summary



Keywords

1. Procedure - Measures of organisation of procedure - Request for the withdrawal of certain documents from the file by a party who has acknowledged the relevance of those documents for the settlement of the dispute - Rejection

2. Officials - Actions - Disputes between the European Investment Bank and its staff - Time-limits for bringing proceedings - Requirement that action be brought within a reasonable time - Point at which time starts to run

(Art. 236 EC; Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91; Staff Regulations of the European Investment Bank)

3. Officials - Actions - Action against a measure of general application - Decision of the European Investment Bank to abolish the system of special conversion rates - Inadmissibility

(Art. 236 EC)

4. Officials - Remuneration - European Investment Bank - General principle common to the laws of the Member States preventing the EIB from unilaterally withdrawing a financial advantage freely granted to its staff on a continuous basis - Duty to consult the college of staff representatives - Scope

(Staff Regulations of the European Investment Bank, Art. 24, first para., and Art. 44)

Summary

1. In proceedings before the Community judicature, a party must be considered to have implicitly accepted that it cannot request the withdrawal of certain documents from the file where it has acknowledged the relevance of those documents for the settlement of the dispute in citing them or referring to them in its pleadings.

( see para. 34 )

2. The need to weigh the entitlement to effective protection by the courts, which is one of the general principles of Community law and implies that those subject to the courts' jurisdiction must have a sufficient period of time available to them to assess the lawfulness of the act adversely affecting them and if necessary prepare their case, against the need for legal certainty which requires that, after a certain time, measures taken by Community bodies become definitive requires that disputes between the European Investment Bank and its staff should be brought before the Community judicature within a reasonable period.

In order to determine whether an action has been brought within a reasonable period, account must be taken of the conditions on time-limits for bringing actions laid down by Articles 90 and 91 of the EC Staff Regulations. It must be held that, although the staff of the EIB are subject to specific regulations drawn up by the EIB, disputes between the European Investment Bank and its staff are comparable in nature to disputes between the Community institutions and their officials or other servants, which are covered by Articles 90 and 91 of the EC Staff Regulations.

As regards the commencement of the limitation period for bringing actions, the very fact that the second paragraph of Article 41 of the EIB's Staff Regulations provides for an optional conciliation procedure leads to the conclusion that, if a member of the EIB's staff requests the application of that procedure, the limitation period for bringing an action before the Community judicature does not start to run until the conciliation procedure has been concluded, provided that the member of staff has made his request for conciliation within reasonable time of having been notified of the act adversely affecting him, and that the duration of the conciliation procedure itself is reasonable. To hold otherwise would mean that an EIB employee would be obliged to bring an action before the Community judicature at a time when he was still endeavouring to have the matter settled amicably.

( see paras 52-54, 56 )

3. The general scope of a measure is not called into question by the possibility of determining more or less precisely the number or even the identity of the persons to whom it applies at a given time, where such application takes effect by virtue of an objective legal or factual situation defined by the measure in the light of its purpose.

Thus, even if the staff of the European Investment Bank constitute a limited category, that does not make it possible to regard the decision by which the Management Committee of the EIB decides to abolish the system of special conversion rates, which is a decision intended to produce legal effects with regard to a group of persons, as a bundle of individual decisions, that is to say, those staff, on a general and abstract basis. It follows that that decision cannot be the subject of a direct action by those staff.

( see paras 61-62 )

4. It is clear from the first paragraph of Article 24 of the Staff Regulations of the European Investment Bank and from Article 24 of the Convention on the Representation of the Staff of the EIB that the college of staff representatives must be consulted on any proposal which the administration intends to submit to the Management Committee concerning inter alia remuneration.

That being so, Article 24 of that convention merely enshrines a general principle of labour law common to the laws of the Member States, which is applicable under Article 44 of the EIB Staff Regulations, to the contracts concluded between the EIB and its staff, according to which an employer can unilaterally withdraw a financial advantage which he has freely granted to his employees on a continuous basis only after consultation of those employees or their representatives.

Accordingly, even though the benefit which EIB staff derived from the system of special conversion rates did not form part of their remuneration within the meaning of Annex I to the convention as referred to in Article 24 thereof, the fact remains that the EIB was bound to consult staff representatives under that general principle of labour law before taking the decision to withdraw the advantage in question, since, in abolishing that system, the EIB was unilaterally withdrawing from its staff a financial advantage freely granted on a continuous basis.

However, the consultation of staff representatives which the EIB is obliged to organise under that general principle of labour law common to all the Member States in no way implies that those representatives have a right of co-decision on any abolition of a financial benefit such as that derived from the system of special conversion rates. The right to be consulted leaves the managerial prerogative of the employer intact. However such consultation must be such as to have an influence on the substance of the measure adopted, which implies that it must be timely and bona fide.

( see paras 82, 84-86, 89-90 )