Keywords
Summary

Keywords

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1. Officials ° Actions ° Act adversely affecting an official ° Definition ° Decision of the administration which may be regarded as a decision of the appointing authority ° Inclusion ° Decision communicated orally to the party concerned ° No effect

(Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91)

2. Officials ° Working conditions ° Allowance for continuous working or shiftwork ° Conditions for granting

(Staff Regulations, Art. 56a; Council Regulation No 300/76, Art. 1(1))

3. Officials ° Duty of the administration to have regard to the interests of officials ° Protection of legitimate expectations ° Scope ° Limits

4. Officials ° Actions ° Actions including an application for annulment and an application for compensation ° Actions based on separate legal bases ° Conditions for admissibility of the application for damages

(Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91)

Summary

1. For a decision to constitute an act adversely affecting an official, it must emanate from the competent authority and contain a definitive position adopted by the administration.

Such is the case as regards a memorandum by which the administration rejects in a clear, precise and reasoned manner a request submitted by an official' s immediate superior on the official' s behalf, where the person concerned, having regard to the status of the author of the memorandum, was legitimately entitled to consider that it was issued by the competent authority. The fact that the rejection of the request, formally addressed to the superior, was communicated only orally to the official cannot prevent such a rejection constituting, for the official, a decision adversely affecting him.

2. Entitlement to an allowance for continuous work or shiftwork, provided for by Regulation No 300/76, applying Article 56a of the Staff Regulations, cannot be extended, on the basis of an interpretation by analogy of the provisions of that regulation, to categories of officials other than those expressly defined therein. Such an interpretation would adversely affect the legislature' s discretion, which must be exercised in accordance with the principle of good administration, in defining the categories of persons entitled to the allowance. Furthermore, because the first indent of Article 1(1) of Regulation No 300/76 does not make the grant of an allowance conditional on working at night, it goes beyond the provisions of Article 56a of the Staff Regulations, which itself applies by way of exception from the general rules on remuneration, so that it cannot in any event apply to officials who do not fall within the categories of recipients expressly defined by the regulation.

3. In its relations with officials, the administration is bound to observe the Staff Regulations, which means both that officials cannot invoke the duty of the administration to have regard for the interests of officials in order to obtain benefits which the Staff Regulations do not make it permissible to grant them and that they cannot, with the same purpose, invoke the principle of the protection of legitimate expectations where the information or promises on which they allegedly relied did not take account of the Staff Regulations.

4. Where, in the context of an action for annulment, an official submits an application for damages having no link with the said action, the admissibility of that application must be considered separately from that of the claim for annulment.

In that regard, the applicant cannot bring forward an argument based on new facts which came to light during the proceedings and which led him to make pecuniary claims in order to avoid the obligation of following the procedure through official channels provided for under the Staff Regulations, which, in the case of damage which was not due to an act adversely affecting him, presupposes the prior submission of a request, within the meaning of Article 90(1) of the Staff Regulations, for compensation for the damage alleged.