JUDGMENT OF THE CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL (Second Chamber)

9 October 2008

Case F-49/06

Bart Nijs

v

Court of Auditors of the European Communities

(Civil service – Officials – Promotion – 2005 promotion procedure)

Application: brought under Articles 236 EC and 152 EA, in which Mr Nijs seeks annulment of the decision not to promote him in 2005 and of ‘any connected and/or subsequent decision’, and an order for the Court of Auditors to compensate him for all the material and non-material harm he claims to have suffered as a result of the irregularities allegedly committed by the Court of Auditors.

Held: The action is dismissed as partly inadmissible and partly unfounded. The applicant is ordered to pay all the costs.

Summary

Procedure – Costs – Costs caused unreasonably or vexatiously

(Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, Art. 87(3), second subpara.)

The second subparagraph of Article 87(3) of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance must be applied and an official ordered to pay all the costs of the proceedings where he has put forward particularly unreasonable challenges largely based on conjecture and insinuations which are not relevant to the subject-matter of the action or any other pleadings, and from which certain passages have had to be removed because of their defamatory nature.

(see paras 81-82)