JUDGMENT OF THE COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE (Appeal Chamber)

12 September 2007

Case T-20/07 P

Commission of the European Communities

v

Eleni Chatziioannidou

(Appeals – Civil service – Officials – Pensions – Annulment at first instance of Commission decisions calculating the number of years of pensionable service – Transfer of national pension rights)

Appeal: against the judgment of the European Union Civil Service Tribunal (First Chamber) of 14 November 2006 in Case F-100/05 Chatziioannidou v Commission [2006] ECR-SC I-A-1-129 and II-A-1-487, seeking to have that judgment set aside.

Held: Appeal dismissed. The Commission is ordered to pay the costs.

Summary

Officials – Pensions – Pension rights acquired before entry into the service of the Communities – Transfer to the Community scheme

(Staff Regulations, Annex VIII, Art. 11(2); Council Regulations No 1103/97, Art. 3, and No 974/98, Art. 14)

As it applies, by virtue of Article 1, both to legislative and statutory provisions and to acts of administration, Regulation No 1103/97 on certain provisions relating to the introduction of the euro cannot, therefore, be interpreted as merely imposing a principle of the continuity of contracts. Rather, it provides for a requirement that the transition to the euro should be neutral – reflected, in the field of contracts, by a principle of the continuity of contracts – which applies to all legal instruments within its scope. In particular, it follows from Article 3 of Regulation No 1103/97 that the legislative and statutory provisions, which are the particular subject of this regulation, are not modified in any way as a result of the introduction of the euro and that they continue to apply without amendment both to the situations they governed before the introduction of the euro and to those they govern after its introduction. It follows that Regulation No 1103/97 does not require the existence of any relationship, contractual or non-contractual, prior to the entry into force of the euro, for the principle of continuity to apply to the situations governed by the legal instruments referred to by that article.

Consequently, where the legislature or the authorities concerned intend to amend the terms of a legal instrument falling within the scope of Article 3 of Regulation No 1103/97 or to waive or dispense with its enforcement, an express amendment to that legal instrument must be made. It follows that, in accordance with Regulation No 1103/97, following the introduction of the euro, the Commission had to apply to requests for the transfer of pension rights acquired in Member States having adopted that currency, without any change, the mechanism of the average updated conversion rate for the calculation of the number of years of pensionable service to be credited, introduced by the general implementing provisions of Article 11(2) of Annex VIII to the Staff Regulations which it adopted. On the other hand, if it wished to give a different scope to those provisions, it was for it to amend those rules.

(see paras 34, 41-43)

See: 92/87 and 93/87 Commission v France and United Kingdom [1989] ECR 405, paras 22 to 24