Language of document : ECLI:EU:F:2008:39

JUDGMENT OF THE CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(Second Chamber)

3 April 2008

Case F-68/06

Reint J. Bakema

v

Commission of the European Communities

(Civil service – Contract staff – Classification in grade – Function group IV – Diploma – Professional experience )

Application: brought under Articles 236 EC and 152 EA, in which Mr Bakema, a member of the contract staff of the Commission, seeks, first, the annulment of the decision of the authority authorised to conclude contracts of engagement rejecting his complaint against the decision by which that authority fixed his classification in function group IV at grade 14, step 1, under a contract hiring him as a member of the contract staff which was signed on 25 October 2005 and took effect on 1 November 2005 and an order for the Commission to classify him in grade 16 of function group IV and, secondly, the award of an appropriate sum by way of damages and interest.

Held: the decision by which the authority authorised to conclude contracts of engagement classified the applicant in function group IV at grade 14, step 1, under the contract signed on 25 October 2005 recruiting him to the Commission as a member of the contract staff is annulled. The remainder of the application is dismissed. Each party is ordered to bear its own costs.

Summary

Officials – Contract staff – Classification

(Staff Regulations, Art. 5(3)(b); Conditions of Employment of Other Servants, Art. 82(2))

For the purposes of the application of Article 7(1)(d) and 7(3) of the general implementing provisions on the procedures governing the engagement and the use of contract staff at the Commission, which provide that such staff must be classified according to the duration of the relevant professional experience calculated from the date on which the person concerned fulfils the minimum qualifications for engagement, the Commission cannot, without infringing the scope of Article 82(2)(c) of the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants, under which recruitment as a member of the contract staff in function group IV requires at least a level of education which corresponds to completed university studies of at least three years attested by a diploma, as clarified, by reason of their identical terms, by the provisions of Article 5(3)(b) of the Staff Regulations, which apply the same requirement for officials, refuse to take a diploma into account without beforehand examining the content of the course leading to that diploma and without considering whether that diploma can attest to completed university studies.

(see paras 41, 42)