Official Journal of the European Union

C series

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C/2025/375

27.1.2025

(Case C-582/24)

(C/2025/375)

Language of the case: French

Parties

Appellant: PB (represented by: N. de Montigny, lawyer)

Other party to the proceedings: Single Resolution Board

Form of order sought

The appellant claims that the Court should:

—grant the appeal and set aside the judgment of the General Court of the European Union of 26 June 2024 (T-789/22, ‘the judgment under appeal’, EU:T:2024:426);

—dispose of the of the case and, in doing so, do what the General Court should have done:

—annul the decision of 15 February 2022;

—in so far as necessary, annul the decision of 6 September 2022 rejecting the complaint;

—order the defendant to pay the appellant compensation of 50 000 EUR.

—order the defendant in the appeal to pay the costs incurred by the appellant in the present proceedings and at first instance.

Grounds of appeal and main arguments

Firstly, the appellant alleges infringement of the principles of transparency and impartiality, and claims that the General Court infringed several legal concepts and applicable regulatory provisions. The appellant maintains that the General Court confused and misapplied the principles laid down in Articles 43, 49, 50, 53, 55 and 56 of Regulation (EU) No 806/2014, (1) which it claims influenced its reasoning regarding the absence of any authoritative link between the person concerned and the SRB staff and the objective bias arising therefrom or regarding the existence of an individual protective measure, of a decision establishing the AECE tables or of an individual decision concerning the appellant.

In addition, the General Court incorrectly reversed the burden of proof in respect of the objectivity and legitimacy of the concerns raised by the appellant on which the existence of sufficient objective bias is based. By distorting the evidence in the file and by ruling ultra petita, the General Court held against the appellant that he was responsible for the Chief Compliance Officer’s knowledge of the content of his complaint. The General Court also erroneously assessed the extent of the transparency obligation incumbent on an administration.

It is erroneously and without taking into account the arguments submitted by the appellant regarding the breach of the duties of discretion, of minimisation, of precaution, of good administration and of confidentiality that the General Court rejected any fault committed by the administration.

Moreover, the General Court infringed Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 (2) by rejecting the arguments of the appellant related to the breach of the confidentiality of his complaint based inter alia on the unauthorised disclosure of his personal data to a very large number of interlocutors in finding that the SRB was correct to object that the appellant had not previously submitted a complaint to the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) when Articles 63 and 68 of the regulation did not require a complaint to be submitted to the EDPS when the breach is recognised by the SRB supervisor. The General Court therefore erroneously reduced the scope of the breach of the duty of confidentiality to a breach of personal data.

It is without taking into account the assessment and scope of the obligations incumbent on the administration upon receipt of a harassment complaint, which have to be assessed in concreto on the basis of the circumstances of the case submitted, that the General Court applied the same general assessments in terms of allegedly adequate reaction on the part of the administration in the present case. That treatment, which excludes any individual assessment of the case in question, therefore infringes the principle of non-discrimination that Article 24 of Regulation 2018/1725 clarifies by requiring a case-by-case analysis of each situation which differs de facto and de jure.

Furthermore, it is in breach of the scope of the duty to be heard and without examining concretely the manner in which the decision-making process was implemented that the General Court ruled out any violation of the right to be heard by the authority empowered to conclude contracts of employment (AECE) designated without verifying whether that AECE designated had actually examined the comments submitted by the appellant.

Finally, the General Court found incorrectly and in infringement of paragraphs 4(2) and (3) of Decision SRB/PS/2017/11 of the SRB (3) and in violation of the effectiveness of the procedural safeguards that an administration must provide in the context of a harassment complaint that the SRB had provided sufficient safeguards to the appellant to enable him to try to prove his allegations through witnesses.

Secondly, the appellant alleges an error of law committed by the General Court in the analysis of the appellant’s plea alleging an error of assessment committed by the administration in its examination of his complaint and in its sufficiently probative nature to justify the opening of an administrative investigation. The General Court did not take into account the context decried by the appellant and increased the burden of proof incumbent on a complainant at the stage of the analysis before the administrative investigation and reduced the scope of the duty to provide assistance incumbent on the administration in a context as sensitive as a complaint made against the person who holds the powers of AECE over all SRB staff.

Thirdly, the General Court erroneously rejected the appellant’s claim for a request for compensation in its entirety as a result of the dismissal of the claim for annulment without taking into account the subsistence of the right to receive compensation in respect of the illegalities complained of by the appellant regarding the procedure implemented to reach the contested decision but not liable to entail its annulment. It thus failed to rule on the request for compensation arising from the breach of the duty of confidentiality of which, at the very least, one breach of confidentiality was admitted by the SRB and a second breach was demonstrated in the document file.

(1) Regulation (EU) No 806/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 July 2014 establishing uniform rules and a uniform procedure for the resolution of credit institutions and certain investment firms in the framework of a Single Resolution Mechanism and a Single Resolution Fund and amending Regulation (EU) No 1093/2010 (OJ 2014 L 225, p. 1).

(2) Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2018 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 and Decision No 1247/2002/EC (OJ 2018 L 295, p. 39).

(3) Decision SRB/PS/2017/11 of the SRB, of 29 November 2017, on the SRB policy on protecting the dignity of the person and preventing psychological harassment and sexual harassment.

ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2025/375/oj

ISSN 1977-091X (electronic edition)

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JUDGMENT OF 6. 3. 2025 – CASE C-41/24 WALTHAM ABBEY RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION

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Language of the case: French

ECLI:EU:C:2025:140

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