JUDGMENT OF 24. 2. 1981 — JOINED CASES 161 AND 162/80 CARBOGNANI AND CODA ZABETTA v COMMISSION

In Joined Cases 161 and 162/80

THE COURT (Second Chamber) composed of: P. Pescatore, President of Chamber, A. Touffait and O. Due, Judges, Advocate General: G. Reischl Registrar: A. Van Houtte

gives the following

JUDGMENT

Facts and Issues

I — Facts

II — Written procedure

III — Conclusions of the parties

IV — Submissions and arguments of the parties in the course of the written procedure

A — Admissibility

B — Substance

1. Non-compliance with the Staff Regulations

2. The alleged failure to state reasons

V — Oral procedure

Decision

Admissibility

Substance

The scope of the concepts of re-assignment and transfer under the Staff Regulations

The first submission:

— Applicability of the rotation decision in the applicants' case

— Objections as to the manner of implementing the rotation decision

— Consideration of the applicants' personal circumstances

The second submission: inadequacy of the statement of reasons

The third submission: misuse of powers

Costs

I —. Facts

II —. Written procedure

III —. Conclusions of the parties

(a). Declare the applications admissible and well founded;

(b). Annul the decisions notified to them on 17 December 1979 whereby the Commission declared their posts at the Information Office in Rome vacant and ordered the applicants to be transferred to headquarters in Brussels;

(c). Order the defendant to pay the costs.

(a). Dismiss the applications as unfounded;

(b). Order the applicants to pay the costs.

IV —. Submissions and arguments of the parties in the course of the written procedure

A —. Admissibility

B —. Substance

1. Non-compliance with the Staff Regulations

(a). The rotation system, which necessitates the transfer of officials from one place of work to another, presents wholly different characteristics depending on whether the officials in question were assigned to an information office before or after 24 November 1976: officials transferred after that date are fully aware of the fact that their assignment to an office is only temporary; in applying for such an assignment they accepted by implication the temporary nature thereof and gave prior consent to any subsequent transfer which became necessary under the provisions of the system at the end of a particular period. By contrast officials assigned to an information office before 24 November 1976 did not consent, either by implication or explicitly, to their transfer at a future date to a different place or work.

(b). The legal basis of the two situations is different.

(c). That conclusion is borne out by the fact that a transfer involving a change in the place of work and decided upon against the wishes of the official may, and in this case does, adversely affect the official's living and working conditions. According to the Commission, even the most insignificant interest of the service legitimizes the transfer of officials, even though it gravely impairs their living and working conditions; thus, it asserts that the interests of the service must always take precedence over the conflicting interests of the official. That view is extreme and unacceptable : the interest of the service which is being relied upon ought to be one of reasonable importance. It is for the Court to ascertain whether the interest of the service which persuades the Commission to transfer a Category C official to a different country is reasonably important, or insufficient.

(d). With one exception, the Staff Regulations do not provide for transfer without the consent of the official; neither do they contain, however, any rule prohibiting the transfer of an official against his wishes. Thus under the provisions of the Staff Regulations a transfer normally takes place with the official's consent, and where that is not the case, in the absence of a rule on the basis of which the lawfulness or otherwise of the decision may be established, the legal foundation for the transfer must be sought in other rules of Community law and, in particular, in general legal principles.

(e). The Commission's assertion that the decisions taken with regard to the applicants are to be classified not as transfers, but as re-assignment with the same posts has no legal basis whatsoever.

(f). Contrary to its assertions, the Commission does not have the power to alter the rules governing its employees' conditions of work at any time. Under the second paragraph of Article 24 (1) of the Treaty establishing a single Council and a single Commission, the Council is given exclusive power to lay down the Staff Regulations of Officials; the Council has made no partial delegation of legislative power to the Commission where officials' legal status is concerned. Hence the Commission cannot create legal rules in such matters or amend the existing rules.

(g). The Commission cannot infer a power to transfer officials to a different place of work against their wishes from the fact that the legal relationship between an official and the institution is governed by the Staff Regulations, and not by contract. The non-contractual nature of that relationship merely indicates that it is governed exclusively by the Staff Regulations; it. must therefore be ascertained whether those regulations confer on the Commission the power to which it lays claim. In fact, the Staff Regulations contain no provision whatsoever to that effect.

(h). Nor can the power to effect any transfer it considers appropriate be derived from the Commission's freedom, which is not contested, to organize its operations in the best interests of the service. Even in the Commission's own view the rotation system in question does not entail any reorganization of its services; it provides merely for alternating different officials in identical posts.

(i). Not only do the coercive transfers challenged here constitute a very serious attack on the living and working conditions of the officials concerned, contrary to Article 117 of the EEC Treaty: they are also devoid of any real benefit to the Commission. The work involved and the services provided by the two offices in question will remain precisely the same as before; all that will change will be the person who carries out duties which remain absolutely unchanged. The rotation system may be justified in the case of high-ranking officials but hardly in the case of Category C officials, whose duties are purely clerical, who do not bear responsibility for them and who are not called upon to exercise any discretion. To give work of this kind to one individual rather than to another cannot bring about any appreciable change in the existing situation.

(j). According to the statements made by the Commission's Agent at the hearing on the application for interim measures on 31 July 1980, at noon, the interests of the service did not require, at that moment, that the applicants be transferred; but at 7.20 p.m. on that very same day, the applicants were informed that the interests of the service required their transfer to Brussels and that all the necessary details had been decided upon. That confirms that the decisions impugned were taken without any consideration of the interests of the service, and therefore in a manner which is unlawful with regard to Article 7 of the Staff Regulations.

(a). Strictly speaking, movements of officials decided upon as part of the rotation system do not constitute, according to decisions of the Court, transfers but re-assignments with the same post, the official and the post occupied by him being transferred together.

(b). The applicants' hypotheses reveal an ignorance of the fundamental principles governing conditions of employment in the public service. Because the relationship between the administration and its officials is a noncontractual one, the former may at any time amend the rules which apply to its officials in any manner it considers appropriate to the interests of the service, provided only that amendments may not be applied retroactively; similarly, the administration's power to determine its own organization enables it to effect any transfer or change of posting it considers necessary, subject only to the condition that it must not be contrary to the interests of the service and must not adversely affect the rights of officials under the Staff Regulations. Thus the question whether the applicants consented or not to the application in their case of the rotation system is irrelevant.

(c). There is no need to examine in detail the applicants' analysis of the legal basis for transfer to a different place of work when decided upon with the consent of the official: that is not the case here. The distinction between transfer on application and transfer to a vacant post is, in any case, the result of an inadequate understanding of the Staff Regulations.

(d). In denying that the Commission has any legislative power relating to officials' legal status, the applicants ignore the existence of numerous general implementing provisions which have been adopted by the Commission concerning various provisions of the Staff Regulations. The Commission's power to change the posting of an official, whether the measure is individual or forms part of a pre-existing scheme, or is taken as part of a general reorganization, has been recognized by the Court.

(e). By applying to the applicants in 1980 provisions adopted in 1976 the Commission was not in breach of the principle of non-retroactivity, properly understood.

(f). The applicants have failed to show that the interest of the service is in their case absent or must yield before the grave prejudice which would be done to their interests should the contested decisions be implemented.

(g). The reasons of a personal nature put forward by the applicants were not considered by the rotation committee sufficient to prevent their re-assignment.

(h). The rotation system is intended both to avoid the possible onset of a certain rigidity in the information offices for lack of regular staff renewal and to enable officials assigned to those offices to return to headquarters after a certain period in order to become acquainted with the workings of the central administration, thereby broadening their experience and increasing their chances of promotion.

2. The alleged failure to state reasons

(a). In all its communications concerning the disputed decisions the Commission gave as grounds the implementation of the rotation system. As a statement of reasons that cannot be held to be valid: the rotation system could be implemented quite adequately on the basis of the ordinary rules governing its operation, without retroactive application. Retroactive application is in any case not provided for in the decision of 24 November 1976. The Commission had, therefore, a duty to state the reasons for its decisions and to indicate the reasons for applying the system retroactively. The fact is that there are no reasonable grounds to justify that course of action. The failure to state reasons means that the decisions are void under the second paragraph of Article 25 of the Staff Regulations.

(b). The decision of 24 November 1976 allows consideration to be given to difficulties of a personal nature which may arise for officials in Categories B and C. However, the administration failed to communicate to the applicants the reasons for which they considered the personal and family circumstances raised by them to be irrelevant. The Commission has a duty to state the general principles which it applies in choosing which officials to transfer, in order, in particular, to enable the Court to decide whether those principles are equitable and whether they were applied correctly in the applicants' case. That obligation does not demand a comparative assessment of the personal situations of the various officials concerned.

(c). The administrative procedure relative to the transfer of the applicants from Rome to Brussels commenced at the end of 1979. Throughout that period the Commission consistently maintained that the applicants' transfer was based on the need to put the rotation system into effect. Under that system officials transferred to a different place of work were to be replaced by other officials. It was decided that the applicants' transfer to Brussels was to take place (it has in the meantime been deferred) on 1 January 1981; yet no procedure for transfer has been initiated in time to fill the posts which have become vacant in Rome. Thus the Commission did not in fact transfer the applicants under the rotation system; the sole object of their transfer was to reduce the number of staff at the Rome Information Office. The decisions which are being challenged were thus taken on grounds other than those put forward by the Commission; they are unlawful since the statement of the reasons on which they are based was inaccurate.

(a). As to the complaint that the Commission failed to say why it applied the decision of 24 November 1976 retroactively, it should be remembered that officials have no vested right to the retention of the rules in force at the time of their entry into the service and that the administration may alter the rules governing the conditions of employment of its staff at any time, provided that its decisions refer only to the future. That was precisely the case here, the Commission's decision of 1976 having been applied for the first time in 1980. Therefore the administration did not apply that decision retroactively and was obviously not required to furnish any explanation in that regard.

(b). The administration cannot be reproached for failing to indicate the reasons for which the personal and family circumstances advanced by the applicants were not considered adequate. According to decisions of the Court the obligation to state reasons must be viewed in the light of the margin of discretion enjoyed by the appointing authority, and consideration must be given not merely to the document by which the decision is communicated but also to the circumstances in which it was taken and notified to those concerned. In the circumstances the reasons of a personal nature which were invoked by the applicants were not considered decisive. A statement of reasons containing a comparison of the personal reasons invoked by other officials in the same category who had been granted a deferment of their inclusion in the rotation system would be detrimental to the interests of all the officials concerned.

(c). Since it is a question of a collective measure concerning the organization of the service, and since it was adopted on the basis of a scheme already in existence and known to the applicants, the decision in question does not require an individual statement of reasons in each case.

(d). The fact that the appointing authority decided not to replace the applicants in the Rome office certainly does not mean that the main reason on which the contested decisions are based — application of the rotation system — is incorrect. The facts are simply that, subsequent to the adoption by the Commission of the list of officials to be included in the rotation system in 1980, the appointing authority decided that it was also in the interests of the service not to replace the applicants. The fact that a reason relating to the interests of the service is added to the original reasons for a decision clearly does not mean that those reasons are to be considered incorrect.

V —. Oral procedure

1. By applications lodged at the Court Registry on 11 July 1980 Miss Carbognani and Miss Coda Zabetta, officials in Grade C 2 assigned as secretaries to the Commission's Information Office in Rome, brought actions seeking the annulment of decisions whereby the Commission ordered their transfer from the Rome office to headquarters in Brussels.

2. Miss Carbognani originally entered the service of the High Authority of the ECSC in 1962. She worked in Luxembourg until 5 July 1968 and was then transferred to Directorate-General X of the Commission and assigned to the Information Office in Rome.

3. Miss Coda Zabetta entered the service of the Commission of the EEC in 1965. She worked in Brussels until 5 July 1968 and was then transferred, like her colleague, to Directorate-General X and assigned to the Information Office in Rome.

4. By a decision of 24 November 1976 the Commission introduced a rotation system for the information offices. According to that decision the normal length of assignment of officials to posts away from headquarters is henceforth three years, a period which may be extended, for one year at a time, by up to three years at the most. The scheme applies to all staff in Categories A, B and C. However, in the case of officials in Categories B and C regard may be had to special difficulties relating to the needs of the service or to problems of a personal nature. By virtue of the same decision a rotation plan is to be drawn up each year by an ad hoc committee and approved by the Commission.

5. On 2 October 1979 the committee decided to enter the applicants' names on the list of transfers proposed for 1980; the list was approved by the Commission on 28 November 1979.

6. On 17 December 1979 the Director-General for Personnel sent each of the applicants a letter in which, after referring to the decision introducing the rotation scheme, he informed them that their names had been entered on the list of transfers to be effected in 1980 and requested them to prepare for their return to headquarters in Brussels in September of that year.

7. Having submitted their observations to the administration, on 12 March 1980 the applicants lodged complaints in similar terms under Article 90 of the Staff Regulations of Officials. In the absence of a reply from the Commission within the period laid down in that provision, they brought actions on 11 July 1980 seeking the annulment of the decisions to transfer them. At the same time they submitted applications under Article 83 of the Rules of Procedure for the adoption of interim measures suspending the implementation of the contested decisions.

8. In an order dated 31 July 1980 the Judge acting as President of the Court noted that the Commission did not consider the above-mentioned letters from the Director-General for Personnel to be formal decisions but merely advance notices and held that it was not necessary to adjudicate upon the applications for the adoption for interim measures.

9. On the same day the head of the Management and Organization Department, acting as the appointing authority, signed formal decisions transferring the applicant to Brussels with effect from 1 January 1981.

10. After fresh applications for the adoption of interim measures had been submitted by the applicants on 5 December 1980, seeking to delay implementation of the decisions to transfer them, the Commission decided to defer the operation of the decisions until 1 April 1981 in order to give the Court an opportunity to adjudicate upon the actions. As a result, the applicants withdrew their applications for the adoption of interim measures.

11. By an order dated 18 December 1980 the two cases were joined for the purposes of the oral procedure and for judgment.

12. The Commission maintains that the applications are inadmissible on the ground that the subject-matter of the applications, namely the letters from the Director-General for Personnel dated 17 December 1979, were merely measures taken in preparation for a decision to be adopted later by the appointing authority. Thus at the time when the applications were submitted no formal and definitive decision had yet been taken by the competent authority. That authority, in the person of the head of the Management and Organization Department, adopted such a decision on 31 July 1980.

13. The objection cannot be upheld.

14. In view of both the wording of the letters of 17 December 1979 and the authority of their author, the applicants cannot be blamed for considering those communications to be decisions taken by the appointing authority. Had they failed to challenge those decisions under Article 90 of the Staff Regulations they would have risked subsequent defeat on the ground of inadmissibility for not having challenged in due time acts which, since they informed the applicants that their return to headquarters would take place by September 1980 at the latest, could be considered objectively as amounting to final decisions.

15. Since, apart from the date on which it was adopted, the purport of the decision of the appointing authority is identical to that of the preparatory decision of 17 December 1979, the two acts may be considered as a single decision for the purpose of challenging them in court.

16. In support of their actions the applicants advance two arguments relating to the infringement of various provisions of the Staff Regulations and on the inadequacy of the statement of the reasons on which the decisions are based. In their reply and in the oral procedure they also put forward an argument relating to misuse of powers on the ground that in the course of the proceedings it became apparent that the applicants' transfer was not dictated by the requirements of staff rotation but in fact by a desire to reduce the number of staff in the Rome office.

17. The argument based on the infringement of the Staff Regulations embraces a number of complaints concerning the applicability to the applicants of the decision on rotation, the mode of implementing that decision inasmuch as it permits officials to be transferred without their consent, and consideration of the applicants' personal circumstances.

18. On consideration of these submissions and the arguments of the defence it appears that the parties are in disagreement as to the nature of the disputed acts. The applicants are of the opinion that they have been subject to a transfer within the meaning of Article 7 of the Staff Regulations, whereas, according to the Commission, the operation is to be considered, consistently with current administrative practice, as a change of assignment affecting both the posts in question and their occupants. In this regard the applicants draw attention to the fact that in its decision of 24 November 1976 the Commission itself defined the scheme as a plan to organize transfers of officials between the Offices and headquarters as part of the general programme to promote staff mobility.

19. Within the general scheme of the Staff Regulations there is a transfer in the strict sense of the term only when an official is transferred to a vacant post. It follows that any transfer, properly so-called, is subject to the formalities prescribed by Articles 4 and 29 of the Staff Regulations. However, those formalities do not apply when an official is re-assigned with his post because such a transfer does not give rise to a vacant post.

20. An analysis of the acts which comprise the subject-matter of the actions reveals that, since the officials are being transferred together with their posts, the decisions which were taken with regard to the applicants do not give rise to a vacancy and do not therefore constitute transfers within the meaning of the Staff Regulations. To that extent the terminology employed by the applicants and, occasionally, by the Commission itself, is inappropriate.

21. None the less, that incorrect description does not impair the content of the arguments advanced by the applicants. As recognized by the Commission's own consistent practice, which is reflected in the disputed acts, decisions reassigning officials are subject in the same way as transfers, as regards safeguarding the rights and legitimate interests of the officials concerned, to the provisions of Article 7 (1) of the Staff Regulations, inasmuch as officials may be re-assigned only in the interests of the service and in compliance with the requirement that posts must correspond to the officials' grades. Thus, however the disputed acts are to be described, it is in the light of the principles in Article 7 (1) that the submissions put forward by the applicants must be considered.

—. Applicability of the rotation decision in the applicants' case

22. The applicants' primary submission is that, having been assigned to their posts in the Rome office since 1968, they are not covered by the decision introducing the rotation system which dates only from 24 November 1976. At the very least they are entitled to protection of the legitimate expectation which they had that their posting would remain stable in conformity with the previous practice of the Commission.

23. The applicants' argument disregards the principles of the Staff Regulations concerning the posting of officials and the effect in that respect of the decision introducing the rotation system. The way in which the Community's administration functions implies a duty on the part of every European official to accept any assignment, provided that it is consistent with the category and grade of his post and in accordance with the requirements of the service, throughout the Community in any place of employment within the institution in which he took up his duties. Constraints of a personal and family nature to which those conditions may give rise in the operation of the service are compensated for by the advantages and privileges conferred by the conditions of employment in the European public service.

24. Thus, even before the rotation decision was put into effect every official assigned to a post in a Commission office away from headquarters was subject to recall at any time as required by the organization of its services. Even though at the time in question the Commission had not altered the applicants' posting, or indeed that of other officials who were in a similar situation, for a considerable period that fact does not confer on those concerned any right to the indefinite continuance of that situation.

25. In the circumstances the decision of 24 November 1976 cannot be said to have introduced any new rules of substance concerning the assignment of officials to external offices, its effect being to replace a system of ad hoc decisions by a regulated system of transfers more in keeping with the requirements of justice and foreseeability for the officials concerned. In the circumstances it was to be expected that this scheme would be applied in the first place to the officials who had worked for a considerable time in the external offices and there can be no question of retroactive effect when a decision to recall them might have occurred previously under the general principles of the Staff Regulations.

26. This complaint must therefore be rejected.

—. Objections as to the manner of implementing the rotation decision

27. The applicants emphasize that their intention is not to contest the rotation system itself; in their opinion the system is lawful under Community law when properly applied. However, they express criticism of its application in so far as it allows re-assignment even against the wishes of officials. On this point their argument is that in principle transfers of officials may only take place with their consent, compulsory transfers being permitted only in special cases.

28. There is no support for the applicants' theory on this point in the Staff Regulations. It has been consistently held that the Community institutions are at liberty to organize their offices to suit the tasks entrusted to them and to assign the staff available to them in the light of such tasks (see the judgments of 11 July 1968 in Case 16/67 Labeyrie [1968] ECR 293; 16 June 1971 in Case 61/70 Vistosi [1971] ECR 535; 14 July 1977 in Case 61/76 Geist [1977] ECR 1419). The applicants' argument that a re-assignment cannot normally occur without the agreement of the official concerned would have the effect of imposing an intolerable restriction on the institutions discretion in organizing their services and in adapting that organization to changing requirements.

29. In doing so the institutions must observe the guarantees embodied in the Staff Regulations and in particular the rule in Article 7 of the Staff Regulations which provides every official with the assurance of being given a post suited to his category and grade whatever the circumstances.

30. No criticism can be made of the principles of the rotation decision with regard to those requirements. As has already been stated in the above-mentioned order of 31 July 1980 the rotation system is intended to achieve a number of objectives such as the mobility of departments, diversification and optimum use of officials' experience, closer ties between the central administration and its external offices and the securing of balanced careers for the officials concerned. Accordingly, the Commission did not exceed its powers of organization and management in deciding to transfer the applicants under the system established by the rotation decision.

31. The Court must therefore reject the objections raised by the applicants to the actual principle of the decision of 24 November 1976 inasmuch as it lays down a scheme for changes of assignment between the central administration and the various external offices even against the wishes of those concerned.

—. Consideration of the applicants' personal circumstances

32. In this regard the applicants assert, first, that even if it could be conceded that the rotation system is justified in the case of high-ranking officials it is not applicable to officials in their category, whose duties are purely clerical. Moreover, they consider that the Commission did not take into account, as it should have done, their personal circumstances and the grave adverse effects which their transfer from Rome to Brussels would have on them.

33. In the first place, as regards the application of the decision of 24 November 1976 to secretarial staff, the Commission cannot be reproached for having included in principle officials in that category in the transfers. Such staff participate, at their own level, in the tasks of providing information, contacts and representation which are entrusted to the information offices established in the various Member States. In the circumstances there is no ground for criticizing the inclusion of such staff in exchanges between headquarters and the various external offices in order to promote closer contact between the Commission's administration and its external services.

34. It would in any case be contrary to the spirit of the Staff Regulations, which are the same for all those governed by them, to introduce different treatment for each category regarding the geographical assignment of officials. Only local staff, who are recruited under contract in a particular place, are entitled to object to a change in their place of employment because for them the continuity of their place of work is part of their actual conditions of employment; that continuity is, moreover, balanced by the fact that such staff do not enjoy the benefits conferred on officials under the Staff Regulations.

35. It should be noted that whilst in principle the decision of 24 November 1976 includes officials in Categories B and C in the rotation system, it grants them the benefit of more flexible implementing rules which allow consideration to be given in appropriate circumstances to difficulties relating to the needs of the service or to problems of a personal nature which may arise. It is not contested that in view of that provision the applicants were given the opportunity of explaining their difficulties to the administration and that their cases were considered together with those of all the other officials who objected to being transferred. However, the administration did not consider the difficulties expressed by the applicants sufficiently grave to take precedence over the requirements of the service.

36. It should be borne in mind here that both the applicants were recruited originally at the institution's headquarters, the first to work for the High Authority in Luxembourg and the second to work for the Commission of the EC in Brussels, and that they were originally assigned to secretarial duties in the central administration of those two institutions. They were transferred to the Directorate-General for Information and assigned to the Rome office in 1968 as part of the administrative reorganization which followed the merger of the European executives. Their assignment to Rome continued for a lengthy period which far exceeded that considered in the rotation decision to be a normal period having regard to the requirements of the service.

37. Against their transfer both applicants have raised objections of a personal and family nature, to which is added, for the second applicant, a difficulty regarding the education of her child.

38. Therefore the objections pleaded by the applicants based on their belonging to Category C and on the existence of personal difficulties must also be rejected.

39. Relying on the second paragraph in Article 25 of the Staff Regulations, the applicants further claim that the decisions to transfer them lacked any statement of the reasons on which they were based.

40. In this regard it should be noted that in the letters sent to the applicants on 17 December 1979 the administration expressly referred to the rotation decision. The attention of the applicants was therefore drawn both to the statement of reasons on which that measure was based, which are summarized above, and to the opportunity for them to present any objections they might have. In view of the circumstances in which the disputed decisions were made and of which the applicants were well aware there was no need for those decisions to contain specific statements of reasons.

41. That submission must accordingly be rejected.

42. In their reply, and more explicitly in the oral procedure, the applicants alleged misuse of powers by the Commission, based on the claim that in the course of the procedure it had become apparent that their transfer, originally presented as an exchange of officials between the central administration and the Rome office, was in reality designed to reduce the number of staff in that office. They maintain that it has in fact become clear in the meantime that they will not be replaced there.

43. The Commission has not denied that that is in fact the ultimate aim of its action; the figures given by it in the course of the proceedings show in fact that compared with similar offices established in other Member States the Rome office is over-staffed at the secretarial level, making it necessary to reduce the numbers to more appropriate proportions.

44. In this regard it must be appreciated that the way in which the decision of 24 November 1976 arranged for the rotation system to be put into effect in no way precludes the Commission, when staff are being transferred, from malting adjustments of staff levels between the central administration and the various external offices. Having been transferred with their posts to the central administration, the applicants have no ground to criticize the measures adopted on their departure in relation to the office to which they had previously been assigned.

45. Consideration of all the submissions leads to the conclusion that the application must be dismissed.

46. Article 69 (2) of the Rules of Procedure provides that the unsuccessful party is to be ordered to pay the costs.

47. However, Article 70 of the Rules of Procedure provides that, in proceedings by servants of the Communities, the institutions are to bear their own costs.

On those grounds, THE COURT (Second Chamber) hereby:

1 Dismisses the applications;

2 Orders each party to bear its own costs.