(Civil service – Officials – Recruitment – Appointment – Grading – Successful candidates in an internal competition – New evidence – Lack – Manifestly inadmissible)

Application: brought under Articles 236 EC and 152 EA, in which Ms Anselmo and 10 other Council officials essentially seek annulment of the Council’s decisions cancelling, when appointing them to category B* or subsequent to that appointment, the seniority in grade which they had acquired in categories C or D.

Held: The action is dismissed as manifestly inadmissible. Each party is to pay its own costs.

Summary

1. Procedure – Admissibility of actions – Assessment by reference to the rules in force when the application was lodged

(Rules of Procedure of the Civil Service Tribunal, Art. 76)

(Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91)

1.Although the rule laid down in Article 76 of the Rules of Procedure of the Civil Service Tribunal that the Tribunal may, by way of an order, dismiss an action which appears manifestly bound to fail is a procedural rule which, as such, applies to all proceedings pending before the Tribunal at the time when it enters into force, the same is not true of rules on the basis of which the Tribunal may, under that article, regard an action as manifestly inadmissible, and which may only be those applicable on the date when the action is brought.

(see para. 17)

2.A fact is not capable of setting the time-limits for appeal running again unless it ‘changes the situation in law or in fact’ and is ‘capable of substantially altering the situation of the person seeking a review of a decision which has become definitive’.

The publication by an institution of a staff note which merely draws attention to the scope of provisions of the Staff Regulations and internal rules without adding anything to them, and which merely confirms the application of rules which, without that note, would have been applied in any case, cannot be regarded as a new fact.

(see paras 25, 28)

See:

232/85 Becker v Commission [1986] ECR 3401, para. 10

T-58/89 Williams v Court of Auditors [1991] ECR II‑77, paras 46 to 48; T-186/98 Inpesca v Commission [2001] ECR II‑557, para. 51; T‑171/05 Nijs v Court of Auditors [2006] ECR-SC I-A-2-195 and II‑A-2-999, para. 24

F‑92/05 Genette v Commission [2007] ECR-SC I‑A‑1‑1 and II-A-1-1, para. 61