Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1. Officials – Decision adversely affecting an official – Recruitment of a member of the temporary staff by a political group of the Parliament – Rejection of an application – Duty to state reasons at the latest when rejecting a complaint – Scope

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

2. Officials – Actions – Actions for damages – Failure to calculate the loss, in the application, or to justify that omission – Inadmissible

(Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, Art. 44(1))

Summary

1. The duty to state reasons imposed by the second paragraph of Article 25 of the Staff Regulations and, as regards decisions taken as a result of a complaint, that imposed by the second subparagraph of Article 90(2) thereof, are intended, on the one hand, to provide the persons concerned with sufficient details to enable them to assess whether the decision was well founded and whether it would be expedient to bring legal proceedings to contest its legality and, on the other hand, to enable the Court to review the decision.

In the case of a decision involving a choice between several candidates, the appointing authority or, by analogy, the authority authorised to conclude contracts of engagement, is bound to give a statement of reasons, at the very least when rejecting a complaint made by an unsuccessful candidate against the decision rejecting his candidature and/or against that appointing another candidate. The extent of that duty must be determined on the basis of the particular facts of each case.

As regards the engagement of a member of the temporary staff in a political group of the European Parliament, inasmuch as the competent authority, whose decision, founded in principle on a comparative assessment, was based also on objective data, namely a comparison of the candidates’ files with the qualifications required and the taking into consideration of the selection board’s proposal in the light of the results of the tests, by definition departed from the board’s opinion and, therefore, from the order of merit based on the result of the tests and communicated to the appellant, a general statement of reasons or one taking the form of a mere reference to the fact that the recruitment procedure had been properly conducted does not enable the person concerned to ascertain the reasons for being overlooked.

(see paras 39-41, 44, 46)

2. As regards the material damage alleged in support of a claim for compensation, in certain special cases, particularly where that loss is difficult to calculate, it is not absolutely necessary to particularise its exact extent in the application nor to calculate the amount of the compensation claimed.

However, an action must be dismissed as inadmissible if the applicant has not established, nor even claimed, the existence of special circumstances justifying the omission to calculate, in the application, the head of alleged loss.

(see para. 62)