1.

In this respect I shall make the following observations: Article 25 of the Staff Regulations of Officials provides that ‘Any decision adversely affecting an official shall state the reasons on which it is based’. While it is correct, as the Commission maintains, that an official is not adversely affected by the fact that the true content of the reasons which caused a Selection Board to decide not to admit the official to the tests for a competition were communicated to him after the notification of that refusal to admit him, this only applies on condition that the grounds were adequately set out by the Selection Board in its report to the appointing authority. I have some doubts in this respect. It must be remembered that the competition in question was a competition on the basis of qualifications and oral tests. In such a case according to the provisions of Article 5 of Annex III to the Staff Regulations of Officials the Selection Board should proceed as follows: 1. after examining the candidates files, it must draw up a list of candidates who meet the requirements set out in the notice of competition; 2. as the competition is on the basis of qualifications, the Selection Board must, after determining how candidates' qualifications are to be assessed, consider the qualifications of the candidates appearing on the list provided for above; 3. finally, as the competition is also on the basis of tests, the Selection Board must state which of the candidates on the list are to be admitted to the tests. The prior selection of the candidates is in principle solely based on ‘the matching of the qualifications offered by the candidates against the qualifications required by the notice of competition’ (Judgment of 14 June 1972, in Case 44/71, Marcato v Commission [1972] ECR 435, Judgment of 15 March 1973 in Case 37/72, Marcato v Commission [1973] ECR 361, and Judgment of 4 December 1975 in Case 31/75, Costacurta v Commission [1975] ECR 1563). The Selection Board may only and must only take account of the information supplied by the candidates. However in the present case the notice of competition for the two posts for which the applicant applied did not specify in what field the required certificates were to have been acquired; it also contained an express provision whereby ‘in order to ensure that the candidates comply with the conditions for admission, the Selection Board may undertake, by means of an interview with the candidates: — an additional examination of the diplomas and other documents relating to qualifications and of the statements of the candidates concerning the necessary qualifications; — a test of their linguistic skill”. Admittedly this is merely an option for the Selection Board contained in the second paragraph of Article 2 of Annex III whereby candidates “may be required to furnish additional documents or information”. However, use of this option is furnish additional documents or information'. However, use of this option is particularly desirable where the competition is one in which qualifications play a predominant part and where the application form was completed a long time before the work of the Selection Board (more than two years in the case of the applicant) and not specifically for the purposes of the competition. In addition cases of doubt may arise as is shown by the present example. National diplomas and qualifications may cover different circumstances. The duties involved in the posts to be filled consisted not only in the enforcement of the security rules in force but also in the preparation of the proposals and measures necessary for this purpose. At that time the duties of the applicant included supervisory and inspection duties and in particular he stated that before his entry into the service of the Commission he had carried out the tasks of clerk to a commune in Italy for six years. As the Commission admits that ‘the Selection Board therefore could not know that the applicant had in fact carried out police duties’ in the context of his duties, as he maintains in his application, for which the Selection Board cannot be blamed although one of its members was Italian, it would have been in accordance with good administration for the Selection Board to have ensured that this statement was true as expressly provided in the notice of competition. In view of the wide power held by the Selection Board at this stage of the competition, as the appointing authority can only exercise its choice amongst the candidates on the list of suitable candidates (which, contrary to the intention of Article 5, did not contain at least twice as many names as the number of posts to be filled) the guarantees attached to the examination of qualifications and ‘the ways and means’ whereby this examination is carried out must be scrupulously observed and the Selection Board's duty to state the reasons for its report to the appointing authority must be particularly strict (Judgment of 12 December 1956 in Case 10/55, Mirossevitch v High Authority Rec. 1955-1956, p. 387 and Judgment of 15 December 1966 in Case 62/65, Serio v Commission of the EAEC [1966] ECR 572).