JUDGMENT OF THE COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE (Appeal Chamber)

24 April 2009

Case T-492/07 P

Carlos Sanchez Ferriz and Others

v

Commission of the European Communities

(Appeal – Civil service – Officials – Promotion – 2005 promotion year – Non-inclusion on the list of promoted officials – Multiplication rates for guidance purposes – Articles 6 and 10 of Annex XIII to the Staff Regulations – Legal interest in raising a plea)

Appeal: brought against the order of the European Union Civil Service Tribunal (Second Chamber) of 17 October 2007 in Case F-115/06 Sanchez Ferriz and Others v Commission [2007] ECR-SC I-A-1-0000 and II-A-1-0000, seeking annulment of that order.

Held: The appeal is dismissed. Mr Carlos Sanchez Ferriz and the nine other Commission officials whose names appear in the annex to the order are ordered to bear their own costs and to pay those incurred by the Commission in the present proceedings.

Summary

1.      Officials – Actions – Interest in bringing proceedings – Action brought against a refusal of promotion

(Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91)

2.      Officials – Actions – Act adversely affecting an official – Definition – Decision adopting the list of promoted officials – Implied decisions not to promote officials other than the appellant – Not included

(Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91)

1.      In order to prove his interest in obtaining annulment of the implied decision not to promote him in the contested promotion exercise, on the ground that the promotion rate allegedly applicable in the grade concerned was not observed, it is for an official to show that, taking account of his personal situation and, in particular, the total number of promotion points he had accumulated, it is not impossible that he might have reached the promotion threshold if the abovementioned promotion rate had been applied.

(see para. 34)

See: T‑436/04 Sanchez Ferriz v Commission [2006] ECR-SC I‑A‑2‑277 and II‑A‑2‑1439, paras 33 to 37 and 39; T-415/04 Tebaldi and Others v Commission [2007] ECR-SC I-A-2-0000 and II-A-2-0000, paras 29 to 32

2.      While it is true that the effects of the appointing authority’s decision adopting the list of officials promoted in a promotion exercise do not cease when that exercise is concluded, in so far as an official may find himself in competition, in subsequent promotion exercises, with a number of officials who might already have been promoted in that promotion exercise if the appointing authority had applied a higher promotion rate, the fact remains that the implied decisions not to promote those other officials under that promotion exercise cannot be regarded as acts adversely affecting that official.

(see para. 38)

See: T‑311/04 Buendía Sierra v Commission [2006] ECR II‑4137, para. 349