ORDER OF THE COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE (Appeal Chamber)

10 June 2008

Case T-127/07 P

Francesco Bligny

v

Commission of the European Communities

(Appeal – Civil service – Open competition – Conditions governing admission – Not admitted at the stage of correction of the written test – Competition notice – Incomplete application – Proof of citizenship – Appeal manifestly unfounded)

Appeal: against the order of the European Union Civil Service Tribunal (Second Chamber) of 15 February 2007 in Joined Cases F‑142/06 and F‑142/06 AJ Bligny v Commission [2007] ECR-SC I-A-1-0000 and II-A-1-0000, seeking to have that order set aside.

Held: The appeal is dismissed. Francesco Bligny is to bear his own costs and those incurred by the Commission.

Summary

1.      Officials – Principles – Protection of legitimate expectations

2.      Officials – Competitions – Conditions for admission

(Staff Regulations, Annex III, Arts 2 and 5)

1.      The concept of excusable error which arises in the case-law on time-limits for appeals applies by analogy in relation to the mandatory time-limits for the submission of an act or document to the administration itself. That concept, pursuant to the principles of legal certainty and the protection of legitimate expectations, can concern only exceptional circumstances in which, in particular, the conduct of the administration, out of which the party’s error arose, has been, either alone or to a decisive extent, such as to give rise to a pardonable confusion in the mind of a party acting in good faith and exercising all the diligence required of a normally experienced person.

(see paras 40-41)

See: T‑12/90 Bayer v Commission [1991] ECR II‑219, para. 29

2.      An application for a competition to join the European civil service, which clearly and unequivocally states that candidates must include proof of citizenship for the application to be valid, is not such as to mislead a candidate acting in good faith and exercising all the diligence required of a normally experienced person, who could not reasonably conclude that his application might be acceptable without such proof, even if the application document fails to refer to the provisions of the competition notice making this a requirement.

(see paras 44-46)