JUDGMENT OF THE GENERAL COURT (Appeal Chamber)

8 October 2014

Case T‑529/12 P

Moises Bermejo Garde

v

European Economic and Social Committee (EESC)

(Appeal — Civil service — Officials — Recruitment — Vacancy notice — Appointment to the post of director — Withdrawal of the appellant’s application — Appointment of another candidate — Applications for annulment — Annulment at first instance of the contested vacancy notice on the grounds that the authority issuing that measure lacked competence — Failure to provide an explicit answer to all of the pleas in law and arguments raised by the parties — Principle of sound administration — Inadmissibility of the forms of order seeking the annulment of decisions taken on the basis of the contested vacancy notice — Article 91(2) of the Staff Regulations — Claim for damages — Right to effective judicial protection — Duty of the Civil Service Tribunal to provide a statement of reasons — Whether the state of the proceedings permits final judgment to be given — Dismissal of the claim)

Appeal:      against the judgment of the European Union Civil Service Tribunal (First Chamber) of 25 September 2012 in Bermejo Garde v EESC (F‑51/10), seeking the partial setting aside of that judgment.

Held:      The judgment of the European Union Civil Service Tribunal (First Chamber) of 25 September 2012 in Bermejo Garde v EESC (F‑51/10) is set aside in so far as it rejected the appellant’s claim for damages without providing a statement of reasons. The remainder of the appeal is dismissed. The claim for damages brought before the Civil Service Tribunal by Mr Moises Bermejo Garde is rejected. Mr Bermejo Garde is to bear his own costs in relation to the present appeal proceedings. The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) is to bear its own costs at first instance and on appeal and is ordered to pay the costs incurred by Mr Bermejo Garde in the proceedings at first instance.

Summary

1.      Appeals — Pleas in law — Inadequate statement of reasons — Scope of the obligation to state reasons

(Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 36 and Annex I, Art. 7(1))

2.      Judicial proceedings — Statement of reasons for judgments — Scope — Obligation to rule on all the pleas in law and arguments submitted by the parties — None

(Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 36 and Annex I, Art. 7(1))

1.      Where a judgment of the Civil Service Tribunal does not allow the person concerned to know the reasons why the Tribunal did not uphold the arguments relied on in support of a claim for damages, and does not provide the General Court with sufficient material for it to exercise its powers of review, it must be held that there has been an infringement of the obligation to state reasons arising from Article 36 of the Statute of the Court of Justice, applicable to the Civil Service Tribunal pursuant to Article 7(1) of Annex I to that Statute.

(see paras 46, 47)

2.      In the interests of procedural economy and in accordance with the principle of the proper administration of justice, the Courts of the Union may give judgment in an action without necessarily having to rule on all the pleas in law and arguments put forward by the parties.

That applies in particular in cases where the Union Courts find that the authority which issued the contested measure lacked competence. The defect of lack of competence, referred to primarily in the second paragraph of Article 263 TFEU, affects the very basis and, consequently, the raison d’être of the contested measure. Thus, in so far as a measure adopted by an authority lacking competence should not be included in the EU legal order, its content is, in principle, irrelevant.

(see paras 54, 55)

See:

C‑23/00 P Council v Böhringer [2002] ECR I‑1873, para. 52