JUDGMENT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(First Chamber)

12 December 2013

Case F‑68/12

Giorgio Lebedef

v

European Commission

(Civil service — Officials — Staff report — 2010 appraisal procedure — Application for annulment of staff report — Application for annulment of number of promotion points awarded)

Application:      under Article 270 TFEU, applicable to the EAEC Treaty pursuant to Article 106a thereof, in which Mr Lebedef seeks annulment of his staff report for the period from 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2010 and, specifically, the level of performance and the number of promotion points awarded as a result.

Held:      The action is dismissed. Mr Lebedef is to bear his own costs and is ordered to pay those incurred by the European Commission.

Summary

1.      Officials — Reports procedure — Staff report — Reporting officers’ discretion — Judicial review — Limits

(Staff Regulations, Art. 43)

2.      Officials — Disciplinary measures — Penalty — Downgrading — Definition — Reduction in the number of promotion points obtained during successive appraisal and reporting procedures — Included

(Staff Regulations, Arts 43 and 86; Annex IX, Art. 9)

1.      Reporting officers enjoy a very wide discretion when appraising the work of officials upon whom they must report. Consequently, review by the European Union judicature of the content of staff reports is limited to ensuring that the procedure is conducted in a regular manner, the facts are materially correct, and there is no manifest error of assessment or misuse of powers. It is not for the Civil Service Tribunal to review the merits of the administration’s assessment of the professional abilities of an official, where it involves complex value-judgments which by their very nature are not amenable to objective verification.

(see para. 53)

See:

29 September 2011, F‑74/10 Kimman v Commission, para. 89

2.      A reduction in the number of promotion points obtained during successive appraisal and reporting procedures by an official who has been the subject of a decision downgrading him is a consequence of that decision and not an additional penalty. To maintain the number of promotion points he had before the decision downgrading him would have the effect of allowing the official concerned to have more opportunity than his colleagues of rapid promotion to the next grade, which would be contrary to the principle of equal treatment, which means that all officials promoted to the same grade must, where they are of equal merit, enjoy the same chances of promotion. For the same reasons, the official cannot claim to have retained his level of seniority. To find otherwise would amount, at least in part, to removing the penalty of downgrading.

(see para. 63)