Opinion of Mr Advocate-General Roemer
Mr President,
Members of the Court,
The plaintiff in the action in which I am giving my opinion today entered the service of the Commission of the European Communities as a night watchman on 12 November 1958. On 1 January 1962 he was appointed as a messenger in Grade D 2 and on 1 September 1963 was promoted to Head of Unit in Grade D1. From 19 October to 28 November 1962 the applicant apparently took part in a training course organized by the Belgian Machines Bull company at the end of which he received a certificate stating that he was qualified as an operator. On 1 October 1963 he was appointed Clerical Officer in Grade C3 and assigned to the computer centre of the Commission as a punch-card operator.
Four posts in this department in career bracket B5/B4 were announced as vacant in Notice of Competition No COM 484 to 487/70; these were to be filled by internal competition on the basis of qualifications. The duties of the posts in question were defined as follows: to carry out normal office routine under supervision and in particular to make arrangements for a series of administrative or statistical tasks, to act as console operator on the computer and to perform tasks in Operating System on third generation computers. The candidates concerned had to fulfil the following conditions: An Advanced level of secondary education, evidenced by a certificate or equivalent experience in employment; experience of multi-programming of computers; familiarity with Cobol or Assembler programming desirable; appropriate experience.
The applicant was one of the candidates for this competition. However, he was informed in a letter of 8 February 1971 from the Directorate General for Personnel and Administration that it had not been possible to accept his application. At his request, he was subsequently informed in a letter of 16 February 1971 from the Head of the Recruiting, Appointments and Promotions Division that the Selection Board had not accepted his application because he did not fulfil one of the conditions set out in the notice of competition.
As the applicant disagreed with this decision, he addressed a complaint through official channels to the President of the Commission on 25 March 1971. In this complaint, which was received on 29 March 1971 he protested against his exclusion from the competition and sought its annulment on several grounds. As he received no reply to his complaint he made an application to the Court on 23 July 1971.
The applicant claims that the Court should :
On the basis of these statements the Court is also requested to annul:
In the reply and the oral procedure the applicant withdrew his conclusions concerning the finding that a certain other candidate did not fulfil the conditions set out in the notice of competition, and those concerning the appointment of this candidate to one of the vacant posts.
We must now consider those conclusions which still stand.
1. The applicant maintains first that the notice of competition infringes Article 1(1) (d) of Annex III to the Staff Regulations. He maintains that a notice of competition must specify the exact nature of the qualifications and the nature and duration of the practical experience required. Only in this way is an arbitrary choice prevented and a review by the Court made possible. It is because, in the present case, the Commission has not observed this requirement that the notice of vacancy in question must be annulled.
2. The second submission includes a whole group of complaints. The applicant draws attention to the absence of sufficient reasons for the decision, that is, he maintains that it infringes Article 25 of the Staff Regulations. Furthermore, the findings of the Selection Board as to the experience of the applicant do not agree with the facts and constitute a misuse of powers.
3. I am therefore of the opinion that you should dismiss the present application as unfounded and order each party to bear its own costs in accordance with Article 70 of the Rules of Procedure.
1 Translated from the German.