JUDGMENT OF THE CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(Second Chamber)

24 September 2009

Case F-36/08

Arno Schell

v

Commission of the European Communities

(Civil service – Officials – Promotion – Allocation of promotion points by Directors-General – 2007 promotion procedure)

Application: brought under Articles 236 EC and 152 EA, in which Mr Schell seeks annulment of his career development report for the period from 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2006 and of the formal intentions to allocate promotion points adopted by the Director-General under the 2007 promotion procedure.

Held: The action is dismissed. The applicant is ordered to pay all of the costs.

Summary

Officials – Reports procedure – Career development report

(Staff Regulations, Arts 43 and 45)

It cannot be inferred from Article 8(7) of the general implementing provisions for Article 43 of the Staff Regulations, adopted by the Commission, that the administration is under an obligation to conduct a comparative appraisal of officials reported on in order to draw up their career development reports. That provision is to be read in its context. First of all, while Article 43 of the Staff Regulations requires an assessment to be made, in the form of a career development report drawn up at least once every two years, of each official’s ability, efficiency and conduct in the service, the Staff Regulations do not provide for that assessment to be comparative in nature, as required with Article 45 of the Staff Regulations. On the contrary, according to Article 8(5) of the general implementing provisions, the report is to be drawn up, as regards ‘Efficiency’, in the light of objectives to be attained which are specific to each official. Furthermore, the verification mentioned in the first paragraph of Article 8(7) of the general implementing provisions is a preliminary to the concertation provided for in the second paragraph of that article, which is designed to ensure, within each directorate-general, that the appraisal of merits conducted for the purposes of the report is consistent. It follows from the foregoing that the reference to a comparison of merits in the first paragraph of Article 8(7) of the general implementing provisions must be understood as being one of the elements by which the consistency of appraisals may be monitored, rather than as meaning that the career development reports may be drawn up only after the merits of all the officials have been compared.

(see paras 37-39, 41)

See:

F‑42/06 Sundholm v Commission [2007] ECR-SC I‑A‑1‑0000 and II‑A‑1‑0000, para. 31