JUDGMENT OF THE GENERAL COURT (Appeal Chamber)

2 July 2010

Case T-485/08 P

Paul Lafili

v

European Commission

(Appeal — Civil service — Officials — Admissibility — Concept of the party who was unsuccessful at first instance — Promotion — Classification in grade and step — Multiplication factor greater than one — Conversion to seniority in step — Article 7 of Annex XIII to the Staff Regulations)

Appeal: against the judgment of the Civil Service Tribunal of the European Union (Second Chamber) of 4 September 2008 in Case F-22/07 Lafili v Commission [2008] ECR-SC I-A-1-271 and II-A-1-1437, seeking to have that judgment set aside.

Held: The appeal is dismissed. Paul Lafili is ordered to bear his own costs as well as the costs incurred by the European Commission in the appeal proceedings.

Summary

1.      Appeals — Pleas in law — Inadequate statement of reasons — Civil Service Tribunal’s use of implicit reasoning

(Art. 225 EC; Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 36 and Annex I, Art. 7(1))

2.      Officials — Remuneration — Transitional rules applicable after Regulation No 723/2004 came into force — First promotion obtained after 1 May 2004 by an official recruited before that date

(Staff Regulations of Officials, Annex XIII, Art. 7(5) and (7); Council Regulation No 723/2004)

1.      The obligation of the Civil Service Tribunal to state reasons, pursuant to Article 36 and Article 7(1) of Annex I to the Statute of the Court of Justice, does not require the Civil Service Tribunal to provide an account that follows exhaustively and point by point all the reasoning articulated by the parties to the case. The Tribunal’s reasoning may therefore be implicit, on condition that it enables the persons concerned to know why the measures in question were taken and provides the Tribunal with sufficient material for it to exercise its powers of review.

(see para. 72)

See: C‑397/03 P Archer Daniels Midland and Archer Daniels Midland Ingredients v Commission [2006] ECR I‑4429, para. 60; C‑3/06 P Groupe Danone v Commission [2007] ECR I‑1331, para. 46; C‑431/07 P Bouygues and Bouygues Télécom v Commission [2009] ECR I‑2665, para. 42

2.      The multiplication factors provided for in Article 7 of Annex XIII to the Staff Regulations are a transitional measure intended to guarantee the level of basic monthly salary paid to officials recruited under the previous version of the Staff Regulations, although the factors guarantee not just that the officials to whom they apply do not undergo any reduction in their basic monthly salaries as a result of the entry into force of Regulation No 723/2004 amending the Staff Regulations of Officials and the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants, but also that those same officials do not obtain any increase in their salaries, except for the increase obtained at their first promotion and calculated in accordance with paragraph 5 of the same article, and, if appropriate, the increase resulting from an advancement in step.

A multiplication factor is meaningful only if its value is less than or higher than 1. However, a multiplication factor equal to 1 means that the basic monthly salary of the official concerned corresponds to the basic month salary laid down in the Staff Regulations for his grade and step.

The conversion into seniority of a multiplication factor higher than 1, provided for in the fourth sentence of Article 7(7), means that the official concerned can, after a relatively short period, be integrated into the salary scale in the Staff Regulations without adversely affecting that official’s vested rights or legitimate expectations.

There is no reason why that conversion should be restricted only to the salaries of officials whose multiplication factor is higher than 1 following application of the first three sentences of that paragraph, and should exclude the salaries of officials to whom the factor is applied at their first promotion following the entry into force of Regulation No 723/2004.

The mere fact that the fourth sentence of Article 7(7) of Annex XIII to the Staff Regulations is not set out in a separate subparagraph from the first three sentences of that paragraph, which only envisage a situation where the multiplication factor is initially less than 1, is irrelevant. The editorial layout of a text does not, in itself, make it possible to draw any conclusions about the meaning of that text.

(see paras 87, 88, 99, 100, 105)