Opinion of Mr Advocate General Darmon

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. The present action, brought by Roland Abrias and Others, who are officials or other servants of the Commission of the European Communities, seeks the annulment of salary statements for February 1982 and the subsequent months, a period which marks the first application both of the new method of adjusting remuneration laid down by Council Decision No 81/1061 of 15 December 1981 (Official Journal 1981, L 386, p. 6) and of an exceptional levy introduced by Council Regulation No 3821/81 of the same date (Official Journal 1981, L 386, p. 1). Both measures are alleged by the applicants to be illegal.

2. It should be noted here that, pursuant to Article 65 of the Staff Regulations, the Council must consider:

3. To assess the scope of the measures at issue, it is necessary to view them in their context.

4. In support of their action, the applicants plead one submission based on the infringement of an essential procedural requirement and various submissions relating to the internal legality of the Decision and of the Regulation.

5. The applicants rely upon two further submissions to dispute the legality of the contested measures.

6. The latter complaint is to be dismissed at the very outset. It is sufficient to note, in company with the Commission, which refers in particular to the specificity — the temporary nature and basis — of the levy, that Article 66a:

7. The other submissions put forward by the applicants are, in reality, directly or indirectly based on the alleged infringement of Article 65, in so far as it is intended to ensure that the principle of parallelism is applied.

8. It is apparent from the general context in which the measures introduced by the Decision and the Regulation were adopted that the Council acted within the limits thus placed upon it by the Court.

9. Moreover, the so-called principle of parallelism invoked by the applicants likewise cannot be relied upon to contest the legality of the measures at issue.

10. I therefore propose that:

1 Translated from the French.