Action brought on 25 September 2006 - Giannopoulos v Council

(Case F-111/06)

Language of the case: French

Parties

Applicant: Nikos Giannopoulos (Wezembeek-Oppem, Belgium) (represented by: S. Rodrigues and C. Bernard-Glanz, lawyers)

Defendant: Council of the European Union

Form of order sought

annul the applicant's classification decision as stated in the establishment decision of 18 November 2003 in that it awards him grade A7;

annul, in so far as necessary, the appointing authority's decision rejecting the applicant's complaint;

indicate to the appointing authority the effects of the annulment of the contested decisions, and in particular: (i) the applicant is to be reclassified in grade A6, in order to take account of the exceptional nature of his qualifications and the specific needs of the service, with retroactive effect to 18 November 2003; (ii) the applicant is to be reclassified in a step which takes account of his professional experience and is, at least, equivalent to that granted to him on the date of his recruitment; (iii) the applicant is to be paid the difference between the salary corresponding to the grade and step in which he was classified and that corresponding to the grade and step in which he ought to have been classified, plus default interest at the statutory rate from the date on which the amount in question became payable;

order the defendant to pay the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The applicant, a successful candidate in open competition EUR/A/127 ¹ for the constitution of a reserve for the future recruitment of administrators A7/A6, was recruited by the General Secretariat of the Council and classified in grade A7. Having learnt in July 2005 that other successful candidates in competitions for grades A7/A6 had been recruited by the General Secretariat in grade A6, or reclassified in that grade following an internal administrative review of the initial classification decisions, the applicant submitted a request for reclassification. That request was rejected by the administration, as was the complaint which he subsequently submitted.

In support of his action, the applicant puts forward a first plea in law alleging breach of Article 31(2) of the Staff Regulations, a manifest error of assessment and an error of law, in that the criteria established in the case-law relating to the exceptional nature of his qualifications and the specific needs of the service were not applied. Next, the applicant puts forward a second plea in law alleging breach of the obligation to state reasons and a third plea in law alleging failure to observe the principle of equal treatment, in that 10 to 15 of his colleagues, whose legal and factual situations are not essentially different from the applicant's, were, unlike the applicant, classified or reclassified in grade A6.

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¹ - OJEC C 125/A, 23.4.98, p. 10.