201807201092012912018/C 276/893692018TC27620180806EN01ENINFO_JUDICIAL20180618575821

(Case T-369/18)

Language of the case: Italian

Parties

Applicant: John Napolitano (Rome, Italy) (represented by: M. Velardo, lawyer)

Defendant: European Commission

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:

—annul the contested decisions;

—order the Commission to pay the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The contested decisions in the present action are the decision of 27 September 2017 not to include the applicant on the reserve list for the competition EPSO/AD/324/16, the decision dated 25 October 2017 by which the request for review of the decision not to include him on the reserve list was refused, and the decision of the appointing authority of 7 March 2018 dismissing the administrative appeal brought under Article 90 of the Staff Regulations. The competition notice that is the subject of these proceedings concerned the selection of 10 senior investigators at level AD 9 to include on the reserve list on which the European Commission (principally the European Anti-fraud Office — OLAF) was to draw for the recruitment of new administrative officials to manage a group of investigators in the fields of EU expenditure, the fight against corruption, serious irregularities of EU staff, customs and trade, tobacco and counterfeit goods.

In support of the action, the applicant relies on five pleas in law.

1.First plea in law, alleging infringement of the provisions governing the languages to be used by the European Institutions, particularly Articles 1, 2 and 6 of Regulation No 1/58, of the prohibition of discrimination with regards to language, of the principle of proportionality under Article 5 TFEU, and of Article 27 of the Staff Regulations.

2.Second plea in law, alleging infringement of the duty of impartiality by the Chairman of the Examining Board and of Article 3 of Annex III to the Staff Regulations.

3.Third plea in law, alleging infringement of the competition notice by the Examining Board, in so far as, first, in counting the points obtained in the multiple choice test and in the test on general competencies, that Board acted unlawfully by conflating two separate concepts (namely ‘minimum score required’ and ‘eliminatory’) and, second, when assigning the case-study relating to the general test, it chose subjects that were too specific and gave an advantage to those who already had experience at the European Anti-fraud Office.

4.Fourth plea in law, alleging infringement of the principle of equality between candidates, as well as a lack of objectivity in the evaluations owing to the instability of the Examining Board.

5.Fifth plea in law, alleging an error of assessment, in the light of the large discrepancy between the individual discretionary appraisals of the Examining Board. Moreover, it is not clear from reading the general provisions that the tests were to be considered entirely separately.