(Civil service – Officials – Promotion – Procedure for allocating merit points in the European Parliament – Examination of comparative merits)

Application: brought under Articles 236 EC and 152 EA, in which Mr Collée seeks annulment of the Parliament’s decision of 9 January 2006 allocating him two merit points under the 2004 promotion procedure.

Held: The Parliament’s decision of 9 January 2006 allocating Mr Collée two merit points under the 2004 promotion procedure is annulled. The remainder of the action is dismissed. The Parliament is ordered to pay the costs.

Summary

Officials – Promotion – Consideration of comparative merits – Procedures – Quantification of merits through the allocation of points

(Staff Regulations, Art. 45)

Where, in the procedure for allocating merit points, the administration has a limited number of points which it allocates to officials on the basis of a consideration of their comparative merits, that comparison must be undertaken on a basis of equality and the points must be allocated to the most deserving officials in descending order of merit, until the quota of points has been exhausted. Where it is found, in the consideration of comparative merits undertaken, that certain officials have equivalent merits, those officials must be allocated an identical number of merit points. Should there be an insufficient number of points, the choice between those officials must be made on the basis of secondary considerations. While the level of responsibilities may be a decisive factor in promotion, as provided for in Article 45 of the Staff Regulations, it is on condition that that level is assessed in a comparison between officials with the same merit, and not in a comparison of an official’s responsibilities from one year to the next.

Therefore, a decision to allocate only a certain number of merit points to an official solely on the ground that his merits are not greater than those of officials who obtained more points infringes the principle of equal treatment and contravenes Article 45 of the Staff Regulations, since the administration thereby demands that that official’s level of performance should not be equal to but greater than that of his colleagues.

(see paras 38-40, 45-47)

See:

T-311/04 Buendía Sierra v Commission [2006] ECR II‑4137, para. 93 in fine