ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE FIRST CHAMBER OF THE EUROPEAN UNION CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

12 January 2015

Case F‑49/14

DQ and Others

v

European Parliament

(Withdrawal of the applicants from proceedings — Removal from the register — Article 103(5) of the Rules of Procedure — Award of costs — Order that the defendant pay the costs)

Application: under Article 270 TFEU, applicable to the EAEC Treaty pursuant to Article 106a thereof, in which DQ and the other applicants whose names are listed in anonymised form in the annex requested the Tribunal: to annul the European Parliament’s decision of an unknown date appointing the Director of the Interpretation Directorate of the Directorate-General (DG) for Interpretation and Conferences of the European Parliament (‘the Director’) as their initial assessor for the 2014 reporting period relating to the year 2013 (‘the 2014 reporting period’); in so far as necessary, to ‘suspend’ the 2014 reporting period; for the ‘immediate suspension’ of the head of the Hungarian interpretation unit of the Interpretation Directorate of the DG for Interpretation and Conferences (‘the Hungarian unit’); for the adoption of ‘… measures to guarantee [their] safety … at their workplace, by alerting the competent safety department’.

Held: Case F‑49/14 DQ and Others v Parliament is removed from the Register of the Tribunal. The European Parliament is to bear its own costs and is ordered to pay the costs incurred, in the present case and in Case F‑49/14 R, by DQ and the other applicants whose names are listed in anonymised form in the annex.

Summary

Judicial proceedings — Costs — Withdrawal justified by the conduct of the opposite party

(Staff Regulations, Art. 24; Rules of Procedure of the Civil Service Tribunal, Art. 103(5))

As provided for in Article 103(5) of the Rules of Procedure of the Civil Service Tribunal, a party who discontinues or withdraws from proceedings is to be ordered to pay the costs if they have been applied for in the other party’s observations on the discontinuance. However, upon application by the party who discontinues or withdraws from proceedings, those costs are to be borne by the other party if this appears justified by the conduct of that party.

That provision must be applied in the case of an action seeking the annulment of a decision to appoint an official as an initial assessor and the suspension of that official for alleged harassment where, after the action has been brought, the defendant institution has, essentially, acceded to the applicant’s requests, thus implicitly acknowledging, to some extent, the validity of some of those requests. Consequently, the institution must bear its own costs as well as paying the costs incurred by the applicant.

Where it is because the institution has not taken specific, targeted measures to suspend the assessor and/or the reporting period that the applicant has had no choice but to bring an action in order to safeguard his rights and induce the appointing authority to act on his claims of psychological and sexual harassment which he allegedly suffered, it appears justified to order the institution to pay the costs, and that finding is not altered by the fact that the reporting period in question was resumed in compliance with the principle of impartiality and the audi alteram partem rule.

(see paras 13, 17-19)