Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1. Officials - Actions - Prior administrative complaint - Requirement that subject-matter and grounds be the same - Pleas in law and arguments not appearing in the complaint, but closely linked to it - Admissibility - Failure to allege, even implicitly, in the pre-litigation procedure an infringement of the third and fourth paragraphs of Article 24 of the Staff Regulations - Inadmissibility

(Staff Regulations, Art. 24, paras. 3 and 4, Arts. 90 and 91)

2. Appeals - Grounds - Inadequate or contradictory grounds - Admissibility

3. Officials - Promotion - Consideration of the comparative merits - Automatic promotion of officials appearing on the list of the most deserving officials in the preceding year - Unlawfulness

(Staff Regulations, Art. 45, para. 1)

Summary

1. In staff cases, the claims before the Community court may be based only on grounds of challenge having the same legal basis as those raised in the complaint. The former may be developed before the Court by the submission of pleas and arguments which do not necessarily appear in the complaint, but must be closely linked to it.

Where the complaint does not expressly refer either to the third and fourth paragraphs of Article 24 of the Staff Regulations or to the concept of further training and instruction which is the subject of those provisions, but only to mobility and the career development of officials, such a complaint cannot be regarded, even on a very liberal construction, as containing the information from which the appointing authority could have inferred that it included an allegation of infringement of the third and fourth paragraphs of Article 24 of the Staff Regulations.

( see paras 12-13, 16 )

2. The question whether the grounds of a judgment of the Court of First Instance are contradictory is a question of law which is amenable, as such, to judicial review on appeal.

( see para. 20 )

3. The Staff Regulations do not confer any right to promotion, even on officials who fulfil all of the conditions for promotion. A practice of automatically promoting, save where they have become less deserving, officials who, in the preceding promotions exercise, appeared on the list of the most deserving officials but who had not been promoted, would clearly infringe Article 45(1) of the Staff Regulations. Promotion decisions presuppose that the appointing authority has considered the comparative merits of the officials eligible for promotion and the reports on them, in the context of each promotions procedure.

( see paras 35-36 )