JUDGMENT OF THE COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE (Fifth Chamber)

21 September 2004

Case T-325/02

Michel Soubies

v

Commission of the European Communities

(Officials – Reassignment of an official in Grade A 3 as adviser ad personam – Restructuring of the Secretariat-General – Correspondence between grade and post)

Full text in French II - 0000

Application:         for annulment of the Commission’s decision of 26 November 2001 reassigning the applicant to the Institutional Matters unit of the Forward Studies Directorate of the Secretariat-General as adviser ad personam in Grade A 3.

Held:         The action is dismissed. Both parties are ordered to pay their own costs.

Summary

1.     Officials – Actions – Pleas in law – Inadequate statement of reasons – Finding made of the Court’s own motion

2.     Officials – Organisation of departments – Assignment of staff – Discretion of the administration – Scope – Judicial review – Limits

(Staff Regulations, Art. 7)

3.     Officials – Reorganisation of departments – Reassignment – Due regard to the equivalence of posts – Scope

(Staff Regulations, Art. 7(1))

1.     The Community judicature is under a duty to inquire of its own motion whether an institution has satisfied its obligation to state the reasons on which a contested decision is based. Since such an examination may take place at any stage of the proceedings, an applicant may not be time-barred from relying on such a plea merely because he did not raise it in his complaint.

(see para. 30)

See: T-534/93 Grynberg and Hall v Commission [1994] ECR-SC I-A-183 and II‑595, para. 59

2.     The institutions enjoy a broad discretion to organise their departments to suit the tasks entrusted to them and to assign staff available to them in the light of such tasks, on condition, however, that the staff are assigned in the interests of the service and in conformity with the principle that assignment must be to an equivalent post. Having regard to the extent of the institutions’ discretion in evaluating the interests of the service, the review undertaken by this Court must be confined to the question whether the appointing authority remained within the bounds of that discretion and did not use it in a manifestly wrong way.

(see para. 50)

See: T-100/00 Campoli v Commission [2001] ECR-SC I-A-71 and II-347, para. 41, and the case-law cited therein; T-51/01 Fronia v Commission [2002] ECR-SC I-A-43 and II-187, para. 40

3.     The principle that the post to which an official is assigned should correspond to his grade calls, in the event of a change in an official’s duties, for a comparison, not between his present and previous duties, but between his present duties and his grade.

Furthermore, for a measure for the reorganisation of the departments to affect the rule that the post is to correspond to the grade, it is not sufficient that it should bring about a change and even any diminution of the official’s responsibilities, but it is necessary that, taken together, his new responsibilities should clearly fall short of those corresponding to his grade and post, taking account of their character, their importance and their scope.

(see paras 55-56)

See: 19/87 Hecq v Commission [1988] ECR 1681, para. 7; T-59/91 and T-79/91 Eppe v Commission [1992] ECR II-2061, para. 49; T-78/96 and T-170/96 W v Commission [1998] ECR-SC I-A-239 and II-745, para. 104; Fronia v Commission, cited above, para. 53