Although, in an application for annulment of an individual measure having adverse effect, the Union judicature does in fact have jurisdiction to declare, incidentally, the illegality of a provision of general application upon which the contested measure is based, it does not, however, have jurisdiction to make such declarations in the operative part of its judgments.

In a specific situation where a number of individuals have drafted complaints in the same terms, the appointing authority cannot be criticised for providing a standardised response to them. On the contrary, that approach is consistent with the principle of sound administration and guarantees equal treatment between complainants.

Where, after considering a complaint, the competent appointing authority considers that the grounds for the original decision which is the subject of that complaint are both well founded and sufficient to respond to the allegations made in the complaint, there is no reason for it to depart from that statement of reasons by substituting another. In those circumstances it may, therefore, reject the complaint, reproducing, in the rejection decision, the same grounds as those given in the original decision, without being criticised for infringing the obligation to provide a statement of reasons or the principle of sound administration.

The rule laid down in Article 83(2) of the Staff Regulations that officials must contribute one third of the cost of financing the pension scheme is to be read in the light of Article 83a(1), (3) and (4) of the Staff Regulations, which require that the scheme be kept in balance, and that that balance be checked on the basis of a five-yearly actuarial assessment updated every year, in accordance with Annex XII to the Staff Regulations, laying down rules for implementing Article 83a of the Staff Regulations. That being so, the pension scheme is in balance, in the actuarial sense laid down in Annex XII to the Staff Regulations, if the level of the contributions paid each year by officials in active service is sufficient to finance one third of the future amount of the rights which those officials acquired during the same year. The actuarial approach used by the legislature is thus based on the long-term financing of the pension scheme. To that end, the legislature took into account a series of actuarial hypotheses.

It follows that the contribution by officials of one third of the sum needed to finance the pension scheme must be understood from the actuarial point of view described above and over the long term, and therefore that distortions of calculation cannot be ruled out.

It is also clear from Article 83a(3) of the Staff Regulations that the actuarial balance of the pension scheme is ensured by two factors: the pensionable age and the rate of officials’ contribution to the scheme. While contributions to the pension scheme help to ensure that it is balanced by financing it directly, a similar effect is expected from the increase in the retirement age under the Staff Regulations, since the result of this, in principle, is that pensions under the scheme will be deferred to a later point in time.

However, this is not sufficient to conclude that an increase in the retirement age under the Staff Regulations should necessarily, by a direct offsetting mechanism, lead to a reduction in the past contribution rate of officials.

Pursuant to Article 1 of Annex XII to the Staff Regulations, the contribution of officials to the pension scheme is determined, more precisely, by reference to the five-yearly actuarial assessment and its annual update, which are both provided for in Article 83a(3) and (4) of the Staff Regulations. That five-yearly actuarial assessment and its annual update are based on a number of parameters laid down in Annex XII to the Staff Regulations.

The first parameter taken into account when calculating the contribution of officials is ‘changes in the population’, as referred to in Article 1(2) of Annex XII to the Staff Regulations. Those changes are themselves determined by observation of the population of participants in the pension scheme, as is clear from Article 9 of the same Annex. According to that article, changes in the population are deduced, more particularly, from the structure of the population and the average age of retirement. The structure of the population must itself be assessed in the light of the mortality table, life expectancy, the invalidity rate and the gender distribution of the population. As for the average age of retirement, that is different from the retirement age under the Staff Regulations and is taken into account because it has a more decisive influence than the latter on the actual pension liability cost.

A second parameter taken into account when determining the contribution of officials is the change in the basic salary of each official up to the ‘assumed retirement age’ (Articles 4 and 6 of Annex XII to the Staff Regulations). That means, therefore, that the future value of the basic salary of an active official is estimated taking account of his projected basic salary at retirement (Article 6(1), first subparagraph, of Annex XII to the Staff Regulations). In that regard, it is important to note that, although the retirement age under the Staff Regulations must be taken into consideration, factors such as the possibility of remaining in service after reaching that age, or of leaving the service before reaching it, are also taken into account, as Article 6(4) of Annex XII to the Staff Regulations indirectly confirms. It follows, in short, that the ‘assumed retirement age’ taken into consideration here is an aggregate value.

A third parameter taken into account when determining the contribution of officials is the interest rates evaluated in accordance with Article 10 of Annex XII to the Staff Regulations, and a fourth factor, according to Article 11 of the same Annex, is the annual change in the salary scales of officials, corresponding to the thirty-year average of specific indicators referred to in Annex XI to the Staff Regulations.

It is thus apparent that the retirement age under the Staff Regulations, which Article 22 of Annex XIII to the Staff Regulations in the version resulting from Regulation No 1023/2013 fixes on the basis of the age of each official on 1 May 2014, is a factor which interacts with estimates of the future value of a number of parameters (interest rate, mortality, salary progression, etc.) in the evaluation of the actuarial balance of the Union pension scheme and thus in the determination of the contribution which each official must pay to the scheme in order to provide a third of that balance.

The rate of contribution of officials to the Union pension scheme may thus change regardless of the retirement age under the Staff Regulations.

Lastly, the Union pension scheme is organised on the basis of the principle of solidarity and is not designed so that the pension received by an official is the exact equivalent of his contributions to the scheme. It follows that the contributions of each official do not create, for each of them, an individual entitlement, acquired now, to a specific return in the form of a pension and to the reimbursement of any surplus.

(see paras 45-54, 56, 73)

Judgment of 29 November 2006 in Campoli v Commission, T‑135/05, EU:T:2006:366, para. 134

Judgment of 11 July 2007 in Wils v Parliament, F‑105/05, EU:F:2007:128, paras 85 and 86