Keywords
Summary

Keywords

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1. Officials ° Recruitment ° Appointment in grade and classification in step ° Appointment to a higher grade in a career bracket ° Exercise by the administration of its discretion ° Taking into account of the interests of the service and the practical experience of the person concerned ° Judicial review ° Limits

(Staff Regulations, Art. 31(2) and Art. 32, second para.)

2. Appeals ° Pleas ° Breach of the obligation to reply to the pleas and conclusions of the parties ° Erroneous assessment by the Court of First Instance of the import of a plea submitted at first instance ° Appeal well founded

(Protocol on the Statute of the Court of Justice of the EEC, Art. 51)

3. Officials ° Duty on the part of the administration to have regard to the welfare of officials ° Scope

Summary

1. With regard to classification in grade and step upon recruitment, the appointing authority has a wide discretion in the context of Article 31 and the second paragraph of Article 32 of the Staff Regulations. In exercising that power, the appointing authority must take into account not only the interests of the service but also the previous experience of the person concerned.

Where the discretion is so wide, judicial review cannot take the place of assessment by the appointing authority but must be restricted to the question whether that authority exercised its powers in a manifestly erroneous manner. That is not the case in a situation where the appointing authority, while it considered itself able to take account of the practical experience of the person concerned, as well as other factors, arrived at the conclusion, taking all the relevant factors into account and acting in the exercise of its discretion, that it was not appropriate to appoint the person concerned to the higher grade of the career bracket in question.

2. Where the Court of First Instance has misunderstood the import of one of the applicant' s pleas and, accordingly, has either wrongly declared that plea to be inadmissible, or has rejected the substance of a plea other than that actually put forward, the appeal is well founded and the contested judgment or such part of the judgment as is tainted by that error must be set aside.

3. The administration' s duty to have regard to the welfare of its employees reflects the balance of reciprocal rights and obligations established by the Staff Regulations in the relationship between the official authority and the civil servants. A particular consequence of this balance is that, when the appointing authority takes a decision concerning the situation of an official, it should take into consideration all the factors which may affect its decision and that, in so doing, it should take into account not only the interests of the service but also those of the official concerned.