Keywords

Summary



Keywords

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1. Officials ° Disciplinary measures ° Initiation of disciplinary proceedings ° Limitation period ° None ° Existence of a time-limit for the discharge to be given to accounting officers ° Irrelevant

(Staff Regulations, Arts 86 to 89 and Annex IX; Financial Regulation, Art. 72)

2. Appeals ° Pleas ° Erroneous assessment of the facts ° Inadmissible

(Statute of the Court of Justice of the EEC, Art. 51)

3. Officials ° Disciplinary measures ° Observance of reasonable periods in the course of the proceedings ° Criteria for assessment

(Staff Regulations, Annex IX)

4. Officials ° Disciplinary measures ° Proceedings before the Disciplinary Board ° Signing of the minutes of the meetings of the Disciplinary Board and signing of the reasoned opinion ° Mandatory chronological order ° None

(Staff Regulations, Annex IX, Art. 9)

5. Officials ° Disciplinary measures ° Imposition ° Lawfulness ° No measures taken following proceedings against another official in respect of related matters ° Irrelevant

(Staff Regulations, Art. 86)

6. Budget of the European Communities ° Implementation ° Administration of advance funds ° Management ° Responsibilities of the accounting officer and the administrator of advance funds

(Financial Regulation, Art. 17, third para., and Arts 20, 49, 63 and 70)

7. Officials ° Disciplinary measures ° Imposition ° Distinction between extenuating circumstances and exonerating circumstances

(Staff Regulations, Arts 86 to 89)

8. Appeals ° Pleas ° Inadequate reasoning ° Pure drafting error ° Error which cannot justify the annulment of the judgment

(Statute of the Court of Justice of the EEC, Art. 51)

9. Appeals ° Pleas ° Plea contesting a ground of reasoning in the judgment that is not a necessary basis for its operative part ° Plea inoperative

(Statute of the Court of Justice of the EEC, Art. 51)

10. Appeals ° Pleas ° Requirement that criticism of the reasoning of the Court of First Instance be specific

(Statute of the Court of Justice of the EEC, Art. 51)

Summary

1. In the absence of a limitation period fixed by the Staff Regulations for the initiation of disciplinary proceedings, it cannot be accepted that the expiry of a period laid down in Article 72 of the Financial Regulation for the delivery of the final discharge to the accounting officers can result, by analogy, in all disciplinary proceedings against them being barred. One of the requirements for applying a provision by analogy is that the objective of the provision in question must be the same as that of the case at issue. The objective of the disciplinary proceedings is different from that of the final discharge. That is also the case where the disciplinary proceedings concern exclusively formal irregularities committed by the accounting officer and do not involve any complaint as to matters of substance, since it cannot be held that there are two alternative regimes concerning the initiation of disciplinary proceedings against an accounting officer, the choice depending on the formal or substantive nature of the complaints made, one requiring the proceedings to be opened within the period laid down for delivery of the final discharge, and the other not involving any limitation period.

Moreover, in disciplinary proceedings and proceedings for the grant of a final discharge purely formal complaints have different features because of the differences between those two proceedings both with regard to their objectives and to the bodies empowered to act.

Although the delivery of the final discharge cannot preclude the initiation of disciplinary proceedings, the fact that the two proceedings are independent does not however prevent the final discharge from being taken into account alongside other evidence in order to determine the liability of the accounting officer in the course of disciplinary proceedings.

2. Arguments submitted in an appeal which contest findings of fact by the Court of First Instance must be rejected as inadmissible.

3. In order to assess whether disciplinary proceedings have been conducted within a reasonable period, the Community judicature has to take into consideration only the period which has elapsed between one procedural step and the next such step. That assessment is a matter separate from the total length of the disciplinary proceedings.

4. It does not follow from the first paragraph of Article 9 of Annex IX to the Staff Regulations that the minutes of the meetings of the Disciplinary Board cannot be validly signed after the adoption of the reasoned opinion which is to be issued by that board.

5. Since an applicant may not rely on an unlawful act committed in favour of another, an official is not entitled to invoke the failure to take disciplinary action against another official who has been the subject of disciplinary proceedings in respect of matters related to those on which the charge against him is based in order to contest the disciplinary action taken against himself. The applicant' s responsibility must be considered objectively, that is to say without reference to any lawfulness or unlawfulness of the decision taken with respect to the other official.

6. Under the third paragraph of Article 17, and Articles 20, 49, 63 and 70 of the Financial Regulation, as well as Articles 46 to 54 of the measures implementing that regulation, the accounting officer is jointly responsible for any irregularities committed by the administrator of advance funds if, having been informed of those irregularities, he does not take the appropriate measures or refrains from carrying out ordinary or extraordinary checks on the accounts of the advance funds office.

7. There is no contradiction between taking into account, as extenuating circumstances, the poor organization of the financial departments of the institution at which the applicant is employed and the inadequacy of staff and material resources and asserting that the applicant was under an obligation to carry out his duties as accounting officer in a proper manner. While those factors could possibly influence the choice of sanction to be imposed in disciplinary proceedings, they were not of such a nature as to have a bearing on the characterization of the applicant' s conduct.

8. When a defect in reasoning invoked in the course of an appeal must be regarded, given the context, as simply a drafting error, it cannot be regarded as an error of reasoning which could justify the annulment of the contested judgment on that point.

9. Where a plea in an appeal is directed against a supplementary ground of reasoning in a judgment of the Court of First Instance, the operative part of which is sufficiently founded in law on other grounds, it must be rejected.

10. Where the applicant, referring to the rejection by the Court of First Instance of a plea based on a misuse of powers, states that he leaves it to the Court of Justice to consider whether, having regard to the arguments submitted by him, the Court of First Instance has exceeded the limits of its power of appraisal, that statement cannot be regarded as a plea made in the appeal, since the applicant does not refer to any specific error in the reasoning of the Court of First Instance.