Report for the Hearing delivered in Case 1/87

I — Facts and procedure

Mr Picciolo entered the service of the Commission of the European Communities on 12 August 1971 and was assigned to the Publications Office; as from 1 January 1983 he has been assigned to Directorate-General XVIII. In the meantime — on 24 June 1982 — he had been elected a member of the Luxembourg local Staff Committee, of which he subsequently became the vicepresident.

The present proceedings, brought by him against the Commission, concern his periodic report for the period from 1 July 1981 to 30 June 1983.

That report, which was drawn up in November 1983 by Mr Verheyden, the Director of the Publications Office, after consultation with Mr Perry, the head of specialized department OP4 in the Publications Office, was countersigned on 5 December 1983 by Mr Van Goethém, a director in Directorate-General XVIII. It was notified to Mr Picciolo who, on 28 January 1984, made a number of critical comments. Those comments related to a lack of precision in the description of the duties performed by him, the inadequacy of the assessment of his ability regarding written and oral expression, the downgrading, by comparison with his previous report, of the assessment of his sense of responsibility, the fact that Mr Perry, being a member of the auxiliary staff, could not be regarded as his superior and could not therefore be consulted for the drawing up of his report, the absence of the consultations required for reports on officials who in addition hold office as staff representatives and, finally, the reduction from one period to the next in the level of the assessments contained in his periodic reports, which he considered to be attributable to differences with the the administration regarding personnel management in the Publications Office.

On receiving those comments, Mr Verheyden suggested opening the discussions provided for in Article 6 of the General Provisions for implementing Article 43 of the Staff Regulations (the General Provisions). Mr Picciolo rejected that suggestion and requested that the matter be referred to an appeal assessor. Mr Verheyden continued to propose discussions and sent invitations to Mr Picciolo for that purpose on two occasions, but to no avail. Then, in April 1984 he referred the matter to the ad hoc group of assessors provided for in the guide to staff reports for the preparation of periodic reports on officials holding office as staff representatives. That group expressed its views on 29 November 1984 and on 13 December 1984 Mr Verheyden sent to Mr Picciolo a fresh report to which a statement of those views was annexed; the report differed from the previous one, in so far as the applicant's duties were described in accordance with his wishes and the analytical assessment of his sense of responsibility was accompanied by the following comment: Mr Picciolo's departure in January 1983 made it necessary to review the commercial bookkeeping at the Publications Office and as a result of that review his sense of responsibility can be correctly described as very good .

On 17 January Mr Picciolo requested that the new report be forwarded to the appeal assessor, Mr Mosar, a Member of the Commission of the European Communities; the latter, after a meeting with Mr Picciolo, decided, on 25 February 1985, to maintain in their entirety the assessments made by the first assessor. Mr Picciolo then asked for the matter to be referred to the Joint Committee on Staff Reports. After seeing the opinion of that committee, given at its meeting of 29 July 1985, the appeal assessor sent his final report to the applicant on 5 March 1986; it was identical to the report prepared by the first assessor, except that the observation concerning his sense of responsibility was now worded as follows: Mr Picciolo stopped working at the Publications Office in January 1983. As a result of the Office's accounts being made the responsibility of other officials, it was possible to put them in order, something which proved to be long overdue.

On 5 June 1986 Mr Picciolo submitted a complaint to the Appointing Authority under Article 90 of the Staff Regulations. There was no response to the complaint within the prescribed period and on 2 January 1987 Mr Picciolo brought the present action before the Court.

Upon hearing the report of the Judge-Rapporteur and the views of the Advocate General, the Court (Third Chamber) decided to open the oral procedure, after inviting the Commission to answer certain questions.

II — Conclusions of the parties

Mr Picciolo claims that the Court should:

The Commission contends that the Court should:

III — Submissions and arguments of the parties

A —. In support of his application for annulment, Mr Picciolo puts forward nine submissions.

B —. In support of his application for compensation, Mr Picciolo submits that the failure to comply with time-limits, criticized in his seventh submission regarding annulment, constitutes a wrongful act or omission of such a kind as to render the administration liable. As the Court has recognized in similar cases (Castille v Commission, cited above, and Case 207/81 Ditterich v Commission [1983] ECR 1359), a delay of that kind may be prejudicial to the official concerned. In this case, the applicant evaluates the nonmaterial damage suffered as LFR 50000; however, he limits his claim to symbolic damages of one franc.

IV — Replies to the questions put by the Court

1 Language of the Case: French.