JUDGMENT OF THE CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(Second Chamber)

22 May 2008

Case F-145/06

César Pascual García

v

Commission of the European Communities

(Civil service – Open competition – Conditions of eligibility – Required professional experience – Refusal to recruit a candidate on the reserve list – Discretion of selection board and appointing authority)

Application: brought under Articles 236 EC and 152 EA, in which Mr Pascual García, a successful candidate in open competition EPSO/B/23/04 (OJ C 81 A of 31 March 2004, p. 17), seeks, in particular, annulment of the decision of 7 April 2006 of the Director-General of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the Commission, at Ispra (Italy), refusing to take his application into consideration for vacancy notice COM/2005/2969 and adding a comment in the reserve list of that competition informing the Commission’s departments that the applicant did not meet the conditions of eligibility for that competition.

Held: The decision of 7 April 2006 of the Director-General of the JRC of the Commission refusing to take Mr Pascual García’s application into consideration for vacancy notice COM/2005/2969 and adding a comment in the reserve list of open competition EPSO/B/23/04 informing the Commission’s departments that the applicant did not meet the conditions of eligibility for that competition is annulled. The Commission is ordered to pay the costs.

Summary

Officials – Competitions – Competition based on qualifications and tests – Conditions of eligibility – Experience

(Staff Regulations, Annex III, Art. 5)

The requirement that a candidate must have professional experience to be admitted to a competition based on qualifications and tests for access to the Community civil service must be interpreted exclusively in the light of the aims of the competition, as set out in the general description of the duties to be performed.

Where it is a question of assessing whether periods of work as part of doctoral studies or postgraduate research relevant to the duties to be performed may be counted as professional experience, an interpretation of the notice of competition on the basis of the specific requirements of national legislation would inevitably lead to differences in treatment in view of the differences between the post-university systems in the various Member States. Such work must be counted as required professional experience if it is real and genuine, excluding research work carried out for study purposes that proves to be such a small component as to be purely marginal and incidental, and if it is remunerated, it being understood that the amount of remuneration, even if it is below the minimum wage, cannot have any consequence as to whether the work is to be treated as professional experience. Neither the sui generis nature of the employment relationship, whether paid or self-employed, under national law, nor the origin or designation of the funds from which the remuneration is paid can determine whether the work is to be treated as requisite professional experience for the purposes of the competition notice.

The fact that the research work might have further developed the candidate’s training and subsequently enabled him to obtain the qualification of doctor does not, as such, prevent it from being classified as professional experience within the meaning of the competition notice.

(see paras 64, 66, 67, 70)

See:

C-456/02 Trojani [2004] ECR I‑7573, para. 16

T-50/89 Sparr v Commission [1990] ECR II‑207, para. 18; T-101/96 Wolf v Commission [1997] ECR-SC I‑A‑351 and II‑949, para. 74; T‑329/03 Ricci v Commission [2005] ECR-SC I‑A‑69 and II‑315, para. 52