Case T-549/17: Action brought on 14 August 2017 — Duym v Council
Date: 2017-08-14
Institutions: General Court
Subjects: administrator, competition (EU), equal treatment, job vacancy, linguistic discrimination, official language, principle of proportionality, right to justice, sexual discrimination, staff regulations (EU)








C_2017347EN.01004201.xml










16.10.2017   


EN


Official Journal of the European Union


C 347/42





Action brought on 14 August 2017 — Duym v Council
(Case T-549/17)
(2017/C 347/55)
Language of the case: French

Parties


Applicant: Frederik Duym (Ostend, Belgium) (represented by: M. Velardo, lawyer)

Defendant: Council of the European Union

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:






—


annul the decision underlying the letter of 7 October 2016 definitively excluding him from the procedure for appointing a Head of Unit for DGA 3B Unit NL and the subsequent decision appointing Ms [X] as Head of the Dutch Translation Unit (‘the contested decision’);










—


secondly, order the Council to pay the costs of the proceedings.





Pleas in law and main arguments

In support of the action, the applicant relies on five pleas in law.






1.


First plea in law, alleging a failure to state reasons, in so far as the Council refused to provide the applicant with a written statement of the reasons, including figures, for his being unsuccessful in the procedure for the appointment of a Head of Unit for the Dutch Translation Unit.










2.


Second plea in law, alleging infringement of the principle of sound administration and a manifest error of assessment, inasmuch as not only did the selection board fail to carry out a comparative assessment of the candidates on the basis of numerical marking, but also there is no other document in the file, such as a summary comment, indicating that the selection board was in agreement on the appointment of Ms [X] instead of the applicant.










3.


Third plea in law, alleging infringement of the internal vacancy notice, inasmuch as the applicant’s assessment also concerned the political role played by the head of a translation unit, whereas the vacancy notice made no reference to such an element and it is also not apparent from the Staff Regulations of Officials of the European Union (‘the Staff Regulations’) that the head of a translation unit has a political role.










4.


Fourth plea in law, alleging disregard of the interests of the service and a manifest error of assessment, in so far as there was no test of candidates’ knowledge of Dutch even though the unit was a Dutch-speaking unit. In this connection, the applicant raises an objection of illegality pursuant to Article 277 TFEU vis-à-vis the internal vacancy notice in the light of Article 7 of the Staff Regulations. As that notice does not require a perfect command of Dutch, it is contrary to Article 7 of the Staff Regulations. Consequently, the applicant requests that the unlawfulness of that notice be acknowledged incidenter tantum in the present proceedings. Lastly, he argues that, whereas the other translation services within the institutions may rely on a Head of Unit having a perfect command of the language of translation, this is not the case for Dutch. Therefore, that language will be treated differently in relation to other languages, in breach of Article 1 of Regulation No 1/1958, which accords the same dignity to all languages.










5.


Fifth plea in law, alleging infringement of the principle of equal treatment and, in particular, infringement of Article 1d of the Staff Regulations on the grounds of gender and language discrimination and infringement of the principle of proportionality. The applicant considers that restricting the languages which may be used during the interview to English constitutes a clear infringement of Article 1d of the Staff Regulations, as Ms [X] had English as her second language, whereas English was only the applicant’s third language. Furthermore, he had significantly more management experience than Ms [X], with the result that discrimination on the grounds of gender cannot be ruled out, given that other elements in the file indicate that, in internal selection procedures, the Council has a tendency to choose women in order to compensate for appointing men in external selection procedures. Lastly, the applicant submits that an irrational choice has thus been made, since it gives a single language both an advantage and a preferential status, contrary to the principle of proportionality.