Case T-23/25: Action brought on 17 January 2025 – HH v Commission
Date: 2025-01-17
Institutions: General Court
Subjects: administrator, aerospace industry, competition (EU), engineer, professional experience, recruitment, rights of the defence








C_202501447EN.000101.fmx.xml












Official Journal of the European Union


EN
C series













C/2025/1447


10.3.2025






Action brought on 17 January 2025 – HH v Commission


(Case T-23/25)

(C/2025/1447)
Language of the case: Italian

Parties


Applicant: HH (represented by: M. Velardo, lawyer)

Defendant: European Commission

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:






—


annul the decision of the competition selection board not to include the applicant on the reserve list for competition EPSO/AD/400/22 – 2 (AD 7) Administrators in the field of space, communicated on 20 November 2023;










—


annul the decision of the selection board for competition EPSO/AD/400/22 – 2 (AD 7) Administrators in the field of space, dated 29 February 2024, refusing the applicant’s request for a review of the decision not to put him on the reserve list;










—


annul the decision rejecting his complaint within the meaning of Article 90(2) of the Staff Regulations dated 7 October 2024;










—


order the European Commission to pay the costs.





Pleas in law and main arguments

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






1.


First plea in law, alleging the following defects affecting the lawfulness of those decisions: infringement of the competition notice, infringement of the principle of equality, infringement of Article 27 of the Staff Regulations, infringement of the principle of good administration.
The applicant is an aerospace engineer, who, after graduating cum laude and obtaining a degree after a period of study of 5 years, has accrued considerable professional experience in the field of the competition, which was particularly appreciated by the selection board, which awarded him 35 points in the Talent Screener phase, the threshold having been set at 23 points. However, the applicant, after having sat all the tests at the Assessment Centre, failed to obtain sufficient points to be included on the reserve list, finishing two points behind the final successful candidate on the list. According to research carried out on LinkedIn, none of the candidates who went on to be successful seem to have the professional experience necessary, either because it was of less than 6 or 7 years in length or it was experience that was merely ancillary to the duties that had been indicated as being essential in the competition notice. The applicant claims that, if the selection board applied the criteria in the competition notice with due care, those criteria also having been specified in the guidelines adopted subsequently, he would have been placed on the reserve list, since he was only two points short of reaching the effective threshold. Furthermore, contrary to what was claimed by EPSO in response to the complaint, one candidate was transferred from the AD 9 competition to the AD 7 competition at a very late stage of the procedure, thereby altering the equality of treatment between the candidates, in breach of the terms of the competition notice. The applicant also complains that, as a result of the technical problems both during the written tests (for example, the bothersome approach of the remote invigilator, who constantly asked him to show his face) and during the oral tests (loss of connection), his skills were not assessed in conditions that were identical to the test conditions of other candidates. Contrary to what was claimed by ESPO in response to the complaint, the applicant raised a ticket on a number of occasions and immediately, on the three days following the tests, sent EPSO a message concerning the incident.










2.


Second plea in law, alleging an infringement of the principle of equality due to a failure to act in accordance with the organisational measures foreseen in the judgment in De Mendoza Asensi to ensure the consistency and objectivity of the assessments of the selection board and an infringement of Article 3(1) of Annex III to the Staff Regulations. In truth, the chairman was not present for the first minutes of his oral test, while the presence of a total of four vice-chairpersons is contrary to the provisions of the Staff Regulations.










3.


Third plea in law, alleging a failure to meet the obligation to state reasons and an infringement of the associated rights of the defence in so far as the specific reason why he was awarded one additional point during the pre-contentious phase was not communicated to him. This precluded him from understanding the impropriety that had been uncovered during the procedure which had evident repercussions on his rights of defence in the pre-contentious phase.






ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2025/1447/oj
ISSN 1977-091X (electronic edition)