Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1 Officials - Actions - Prior complaint through administrative channels - Subject-matter - Correspondence between complaint and action

(Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91)

2 Officials - Decision having an adverse effect - Obligation to state reasons - Purpose - Scope - Decision finding that an official's absence is irregular, following a medical examination - Medical confidentiality

(Staff Regulations, Art. 25, second para.)

Summary

3 Although a complaint through administrative channels is an indispensable preliminary to bringing an action against an act adversely affecting a person to whom the Staff Regulations apply, it is not the function of that complaint to bind strictly and absolutely the judicial stage of the proceedings, provided that the claims submitted at the latter stage change neither the cause nor the object of the complaint. That applies to an action for the annulment of the decisions which gave rise to the complaint, in which the pleas in law relied on in support of the claim for annulment are closely linked to the grounds of challenge in the complaint.

4 The purpose of the statement of the reasons on which a decision adversely affecting an official is based, required by the second paragraph of Article 25 of the Staff Regulations, is to enable the Community judicature to review the legality of the decision and to provide the person concerned with details sufficient to allow him to ascertain whether or not the decision is well founded. The requirement of a statement of reasons must be assessed in the light of the circumstances of the case, in particular the measure at issue and the nature of the reasons relied on.

Where the decision concerned concludes, following a medical examination, that an official's absence is irregular and refers expressly to the assessment of the medical officer to the effect that the official is fit to resume his duties on the day following his visit, and the official fails to comply, it is not necessary for the institution, on its own initiative, to attach to that decision, or to reproduce in the statement of reasons for it, the medical assessments made by the medical officer after his visit to the official's home. Since such assessments may be a matter of medical secrecy or be covered by other requirements of confidentiality, it is incumbent on the person concerned himself or his attending medical practitioner, if appropriate, to ask the institution to notify the medical officer's medical assessments to him.