European Parliament v Angelo Innamorati.
Date: 1996-07-04
17 The Court of Justice has consistently held that pursuant to Article 168a of the Treaty and Article 51 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the EC, an appeal may be based only on grounds relating to infringement of rules of law, to the exclusion of any appraisal of the facts (see, inter alia, Joined Cases C-241/91 P and C-242/91 P RTE and ITP v Commission [1995] ECR I-743, paragraph 67).
23 As the Court of First Instance has pointed out, in paragraph 26 of the contested judgment, the requirement that a decision adversely affecting a person should state the reasons on which it is based is intended to provide the person concerned with sufficient details to allow him to ascertain whether or not the decision is well founded and make it possible for the decision to be the subject of judicial review (see, in particular, Case 195/80 Michel v Parliament [1981] ECR 2861, paragraph 22).
24 As far as concerns decisions taken by a selection board in a competition, the obligation to state reasons must be reconciled with observance of the secrecy surrounding the proceedings of selection boards by virtue of Article 6 of Annex III to the Staff Regulations of Officials. As the Court of Justice has already had occasion to state, that secrecy was introduced with a view to guaranteeing the independence of selection boards and the objectivity of their proceedings, by protecting them from all external interference and pressures, whether these come from the Community administration itself or the candidates concerned or third parties. Observance of this secrecy therefore precludes both disclosure of the attitudes adopted by individual members of selection boards and disclosure of any factors relating to individual or comparative assessments of candidates (Case 89/79 Bonu v Council [1980] ECR 553, paragraph 5).
26 As the Court has already pointed out, the task of a selection board involves as a rule at least two separate stages, the first being an examination of the applications in order to select the candidates admitted to the competition and the second being an examination of the abilities of the candidates for the posts to be filled in order to draw up a list of suitable candidates (see, in particular, Case 44/71 Marcato v Commission [1972] ECR 427, paragraph 19; Case 37/72 Marcato v Commission [1973] ECR 361, paragraph 18, and Case 31/75 Costacurta v Commission [1975] ECR 1563, paragraph 10).
27 The first stage, particularly where the competition is based on formal qualifications, consists in comparing the diplomas or other certificates of qualifications provided by the candidates with the qualifications required by the notice of competition (see the judgments cited above in Case 44/71 Marcato v Commission, paragraph 20; Case 37/72 Marcato v Commission, paragraph 19, and Case 31/75 Costacurta v Commission, paragraph 11). Since that comparison is made on the basis of objective factors which are moreover known to each candidate in his own case, observance of the secrecy surrounding the proceedings of the selection board does not preclude communication of those objective factors and in particular of the criteria for assessment upon which the selection made at the stage of the preliminary proceedings in the competition was based, a selection which enables those whose applications have been rejected even before any individual test to ascertain the possible reasons for their elimination (see Bonu v Council, cited above, paragraph 5).
28 By contrast, the second stage of the selection board' s proceedings involves tasks that are primarily comparative in character and is accordingly covered by the secrecy inherent in those proceedings (see the judgments cited above in Case 44/71 Marcato v Commission, paragraph 20; Case 37/72 Marcato v Commission, paragraph 19, and Costacurta v Commission, paragraph 11).