ORDER OF THE EUROPEAN UNION CIVIL SERVICE TRIBUNAL

(First Chamber)

12 July 2012

Case F‑22/11

Rosella Conticchio

v

European Commission

(Civil service — Officials — Pensions — Calculation of pension rights — Classification in step — Preliminary plea of illegality — Whether admissible)

Application: brought under Article 270 TFEU, applicable to the EAEC Treaty by virtue of Article 106a thereof, in which Ms Conticchio seeks, principally, annulment of the decision relating to the payment of her retirement pension.

Held: The action is dismissed as partly manifestly inadmissible and partly manifestly unfounded. Each party is to bear its own costs.

Summary

Officials — Actions — Act adversely affecting an official — Definition — Salary statement — Inclusion for the purposes of the exercise of the right to bring proceedings — Condition

(Staff Regulations, Arts 90 and 91)

A pay slip, by its nature and purpose, does not as such have the characteristics of an act adversely affecting an official, since it merely expresses in financial terms the effect of earlier legal decisions concerning the official’s situation. Thus, the act which actually adversely affects the official is the decision by the appointing authority to reduce or abolish a payment which the official received hitherto and which was shown on his pay slips.

That being said, the fact remains that, as far as procedural law is concerned, a pay slip may constitute a measure producing specific legal effects in respect of the person to whom it is addressed. In particular, notification of the monthly salary statement has the effect of setting time running for the purpose of the time-limit for proceedings against an administrative decision, where the existence of that decision is clearly apparent from the statement. That is the case with a monthly salary statement which reveals the existence of a decision of the administration on an official’s classification in step.

(see paras 26, 27)

See:

27 June 1989, 200/87 Giordani v Commission, paras 13 and 14

23 April 2008, F–103/05 Pickering v Commission, para. 72 and the case-law cited therein