Action brought on 8 March 2024 – AF v Conseil

(Case T-154/24)

Language of the case: English

Parties

Applicant: AF (represented by: A. Guillerme and F. Patuelli, lawyers)

Defendant: Council of the European Union

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the Court should:

annul the applicant’s final assessment report for the year 2022;

order the defendant to pay a compensation for the material and moral damages suffered by the applicant in relation to the unjustified downgrading and the attribution to the applicant of unjustified low grades, assessed ex aequo et bono and on a provisionally basis at EUR 30 000, subject to an increase during the proceedings and subject to default interest, starting from the date of delivery of the judgment and continuing until full payment, at the rate set by the European Central Bank for its main refinancing operations, increased by three and a half percentage points;

order the defendant to pay the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

In support of the action, the applicant relies on three pleas in law.

First plea in law, alleging that the applicant’s assessment report for the year 2022 is based on materially incorrect facts.

In this regard, the applicant considers that her assessment report for 2022 relies on false or incorrect allegations to justify grades awarded to the applicant. Based on evidence provided by the applicant, the considerations stated by the reporting officers within the applicant’s evaluation report appear to be based on several incorrect facts.

Second plea in law, alleging that the Final Assessment Report is vitiated by manifest errors of assessment.

Based on the evidence provided by the applicant, the conclusions drawn by the Reporting Officers cannot be upheld as either accurate or consistent. In fact, they are devoid of any plausibility, especially in relation to the evidence presented to justify the low grades awarded to the applicant.

Third plea in law, alleging the infringement of the applicant’s right to be heard and of the principle of sound administration.

The applicant was deprived of the opportunity to acknowledge and respond to the specific alleged events that led her Reporting Officers to downgrade her marks. In the counterfactual scenario, she would have been able to demonstrate, as set out in the second plea in law, that the alleged facts were completely erroneous and hopefully convince her Reporting Officers to revise her assessment upwards before finalising it.

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