Case T-146/20: Action brought on 8 March 2020 — Csordas and Others v Commission
Date: 2020-03-08
Institutions: General Court
Subjects: Belgium, European civil service, Luxembourg, trade union, trade union election, union representative








C_2020201EN.01002601.xml










15.6.2020   


EN


Official Journal of the European Union


C 201/26






Action brought on 8 March 2020 — Csordas and Others v Commission
(Case T-146/20)
(2020/C 201/38)
Language of the case: French

Parties


Applicants: Annamaria Csordas (Luxembourg, Luxembourg), Adrian Sorin Cristescu (Luxembourg), Jean Putz (Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg), Miguel Vicente-Nunez (Luxembourg) (represented by: M.-A. Lucas, lawyer)

Defendant: European Commission

Forms of order sought

The applicants claim that the Court should:
before ruling:






—


invite the Commission, as a measure of inquiry or organisation of procedure, to indicate, after checking with the trade unions or staff associations (‘OSPs’) that submitted list No 3, the number of candidates on that list submitted by each of them, distinguishing between full members and alternate members, and the distribution formula between full members and alternate members on the basis of the representativeness of a pair of candidates;




ruling on the action:






—


declare unlawful the Commission’s failure to prevent or censure:






—


the refusal of 28 October 2019 of the president of the polling station to publish a communication informing the staff of the agreement reached on 14 October 2019 between FFPE, R&D, Solidarité européenne, TAO-AFI, USF-L and U4U for the sharing of the representativeness of their common list ‘Ensemble au Luxembourg’;










—


the publication by the polling station, on an unspecified date during the ballot, of that agreement, which did not indicate that some OSPs had combined or grouped together and the number of candidates put forward by each of them;










—


the absence of indication of the OSP represented by each of the candidates on list No. 3 ‘Ensemble au Luxembourg’ to any of the OSPs which presented it, even though they belonged to different trade union families and some of them were based in Brussels and had no record of that list;










—


the results of the elections published by polling station note of 26 November 2019;










—


the composition of the Luxembourg local section of the Staff Committee following the November 2019 elections;










—


decisions on the appointment by the Luxembourg local section of the Staff Committee of its representatives on the Central Committee;














—


annul the adjustment of the representativeness of the OSPs which stood in the November 2019 elections of the CLPL adopted by the Commission after the publication of those results on the basis of the representativeness-sharing agreement of 14 October 2019;










—


annul any decision to allocate to the OSPs that are signatories to the agreement of 14 October 2019 additional resources to those available to them on the basis of their recognised representativeness following the 2016 elections of the CLPL;










—


order the European Commission to pay the costs.





Pleas in law and main arguments

In support of their action the applicants rely on four pleas in law.






1.


First plea in law alleging breach of the principle of free and democratic elections, in so far as, because the polling station failed to publish the agreement on shared representation before the start of the ballot, the logos appearing on the electoral poster for list No 3 ‘Ensemble Luxembourg’ were such that voters thought that list was presented by five professional trade union organisations (OSPs), as named therein, represented equally by the 20 pairs of candidates, whereas the agreement had resulted in the list being presented by six OSPs, two of which had other names and were unequally represented.










2.


Second plea in law, alleging breach of the principle of free and democratic elections, in so far as the publication during the ballot by the polling station of the agreement on shared representation was such that some voters thought that list No 3 was presented by six OSPs represented by the 20 pairs of candidates on that list in the proportions indicated in the agreement, whereas it was presented by three OSPs and a group of three others, one of the latter being able to represent the other two, thus not represented by candidates on the list, at least in the proportion indicated.










3.


Third plea in law, alleging an infringement of the freedom of choice between the candidates on list No 3 and the risk of confusion as to the OSP supported therein, in so far as neither list No 3 ‘Ensemble Luxembourg’ nor the corresponding electoral poster mentioned the OSP represented by each of the candidates on that list, even though it was a list presented by six different OSPs, or by three OSPs and a group or association of three others, which belonged to different trade union families, based in Luxembourg but also in Brussels, and which had not all expressed their support for the common list.










4.


Fourth plea in law, alleging breach of the principle of free and democratic elections, in so far as the publication during the ballot by the polling station of the agreement on shared representativeness was such as to lead voters to believe that the OSPs which presented list No 3 were represented on it by a number of candidates corresponding to the share indicated for each of them, whereas this was not the case, or at any rate that R&D had benefited from a share of the representativeness of Solidarité européenne, whereas it was USF-L, FFPE and U4U which had ceded a share of their representativeness to R&D.