Action brought on 21 September 2007 - Rebizant and Others v Commission

(Case F-94/07)

Language of the case: French

Parties

Applicant: Jean Rebizant (Karlsruhe, Germany) and Others (represented by: S. Orlandi, A. Coolen, J.-N. Lois and E. Marchal, lawyers)

Defendant: Commission of the European Communities

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Tribunal should:

declare unlawful the decision fixing the promotion thresholds towards grade AD 13 applicable to officials under the "Research"/"Joint Research Centre" (JRC) and "Operations" budget;

annul the decision of the appointing authority not to promote the applicants to grade AD 13 under the 2006 promotion procedure;

order the Commission to pay the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

In support of their action, the applicants are relying on the following pleas:

infringement of Article 5(5) of the Staff Regulations of Officials of the European Communities ('the Staff Regulations');

infringement of Article 6(2) of the Staff Regulations and Article 9 of Annex XIII thereof;

infringement of the principle of equal treatment.

The applicants state that, by setting the promotion threshold to Grade AD 13 at 98.5 for officials under the Research and JRC budgets, the Commission failed to take into account, first, the jobs which, under Article 9 of Annex XIII to the Staff Regulations, were effectively vacant at the Research DG and the JRC DG and, second, the specific nature of the situation of officials covered by those budgets.

The applicants maintain that, by failing to do this, the Commission has failed to comply with its decision of 20 July 2005 on the procedure for the promotion of officials remunerated from the research section of the general budget, a decision which aims to establish rules ensuring the principle of equal treatment is observed between officials under the different budgets.

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