Appeal brought on 25 June 2007 by Petrus Kerstens against the order of the Civil Service Tribunal made on 25 April 2007 in Case F-59/06, Kerstens v Commission

(Case T-222/07 P)

(2007/C 199/78)

Language of the case: French

Parties

Appellant: Petrus J. F. Kerstens (Overijse, Belgium) (represented by C. Mourato, lawyer)

Other party to the proceedings: Commission of the European Communities

Form of order sought by the appellant

Pleas in law and main arguments

In his appeal, the applicant seeks the annulment of the order of the Civil Service Tribunal dismissing as clearly inadmissible the action whereby he sought the annulment of, first, his career development report for 2004 and, second, the decision of the appointing authority rejecting his complaint against that career development report.

In support of his appeal, the applicant raises three pleas in law.

The first alleges infringement of Article 7(1) and (3) of Annex I to the Statute of the Court of Justice, infringement of Article 20 of that Statute, and procedural irregularity adversely affecting the interests of the applicant. He argues that recourse to Article 111 of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, applicable mutatis mutandis to the procedure before the Civil Service Tribunal, on the basis of which the contested order was made, could not take place after two exchanges of memoranda and an exchange of notes of observations, that is to say where the ordinary procedure applied. In those circumstances, the applicant argues, the Court could not rule on inadmissibility before the oral procedure.

The second plea, put forward in the alternative, alleges infringement of Article 111 of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance and irregularity in the procedure following from it. In the applicant's submission, the contested order could not have been issued on the basis of that provision without following the procedure and in particular without the oral phase, given that the advocate general had not been heard and the inadmissibility claimed was not obvious.

The third plea, raised further in the alternative, alleges infringement of the principle of the right to a fair hearing, in that the Civil Service Tribunal impliedly held that one of the annexes to the rejoinder constituted proof that the procedure in question was inadmissible, before the applicant had even had a chance to give explanations concerning that document.