Opinion of Mr Advocate General

Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. In this appeal, Mrs Campogrande asks the Court of Justice to set aside the judgment given by the Court of First Instance on 19 November 1992 in Case T-80/91 and to admit her original application which was in essence for the annulment of the reprimand addressed to her by way of disciplinary action, in accordance with Article 86 of the Staff Regulations of the European Communities (hereinafter referred to as the Regulations), by a decision of the Commission of 13 February 1991.

2. A brief summary of the relevant provisions will be of assistance for a better understanding of the terms of the matter.

3. Here we come to the facts giving rise to the case. Mrs Campogrande ascertained — as the result of a judgment in default given against her in a civil case — that her name and her husband's appeared in a register of the commune of Ixelles at an address which had not been theirs since 1981, this registration being due to the fact that the Commission had earlier forwarded her address to the Belgian authorities which informed the commune in accordance with Article 4 of the Agreement, and she submitted a complaint under Article 90 of the Regulations in which she challenged the right of the Commission to forward such information to the Belgian authorities and requested the repudiation of the Agreement.

4. The disciplinary measure in question formed the subject of a complaint under Article 90 of the Regulations and then of an action. The Court of First Instance, before which the appellant claimed that the disciplinary measure imposed on her was based on a factual error, was without legal foundation and was contrary to the Protocol, dismissed the action in its judgment of 19 November 1992; the Court of Justice is requested to rule on the appeal against that judgment.

5. With reference to the legal foundation of the disciplinary measure, the appellant had claimed before the Court of First Instance that Article 55 of the Regulations did not provide that employees must communicate their private addresses to the administration and that in any case it should be held not to be applicable, since the detailed rules for its application had not been laid down, as required by its third paragraph.

6. I shall say immediately that such an argument is, in my opinion, quite groundless. Clearly, the declaration of the Court of First Instance quoted above cannot be understood as meaning that the failure to communicate her address constitutes a breach of the communication of 9 December 1987 and thus of Article 55 of the Regulations, but rather as meaning that the information requested of employees in that communication is (in any case) bound to be given to the administrative authorities under Article 55.

7. As to the submission based on the supposed incompatibility of the Agreement and the Protocol, the appellant described before the Court of First Instance the difference between the two acts concerning the information which the Commission is bound to communicate to the Member States and the final recipients of that information, and pointed to the breach of the Protocol arising from the unlawful interpretation of the Agreement given by the Belgian authorities.

8. Before going on to consider Mrs Campogrande's disagreements with that line of argument, I believe that it would be useful here to point out that the Court of First Instance has shown how, once it is established that refusal to communicate an address to the institution constitutes a breach of the obligations under the Regulations laid down by Article 55 of the same, which concern only the internal working of the Commission and not problems relating to the Commission's communicating its employees' addresses to the national authorities of the Member States concerned (...), this plea in law, even if well founded, would not of itself be sufficient to require the annulment of the disciplinary measure (paragraph 39).

9. Taking account of the foregoing, I have to wonder whether examination of the submission based on the alleged incompatibility of the Agreement and the Protocol could be dispensed with, if only for reasons of procedural economy.

10. That being stated, I note that in her appeal Mrs Campogrande acknowledged that the Agreement did not, strictly speaking, contain any provision contrary to the Protocol. Nevertheless, she claims that the way in which the Commission interpreted and applied the Agreement was incompatible with Article 12 of the Protocol, as could be inferred from the fact that the institution stated that according to the Agreement officials and agents shall from now on be the subject of a note entered in the population registers of the commune in which they are resident (Communication of 9 December 1987), that such an entry was tantamount to registration itself (letter of the Commission to the appellant of 22 May 1990) and that a note entered by the said communes (...) had the same effects as registration (Commission's defence before the Court of First Instance).

11. The Commission maintained that the contested interpretation of the Agreement was in perfect accord with Article 12 of the Protocol, but stated that the provisions under which the said information would be noted in the population registers and the fact that such an entry would amount to registration were laid down by the Belgian authorities and not by the defendant (the respondent in the present case), which manifestly had no competence to enact provisions of that sort. It confined itself instead to referring to the substance of the Belgian circulars on the question and did not provide or in any case endorse that interpretation of the Agreement.

12. Whereas Article 12(b) of the Protocol prohibits any measure obliging officials to apply for entry in population registers, I would point out that that is not what happened in this case, the Agreement being limited solely to providing that addresses are to be forwarded to the communes concerned.

13. Another and different question arises from the fact that, according to the Belgian authorities, communication of the addresses and consequent noting in the registers are equivalent to entry in the registers. It does not appear to me that it is for the Court in these proceedings to deal with that question, that is to say, to rule on the interpretation of the Agreement adopted by the Belgian authorities, as it is not pertinent to the case before the Court.

14. In the light of the foregoing considerations, I suggest that the Court dismiss Mrs Campogrande's appeal.

1 Original language: Italian.

2 Judgment in Case T-80/91 Campogrande v Commission [1992] ECR II-2459.

3 The regulation in question provides that, when privileges and immunities arc in dispute, the official concerned shall immediately inform the appointing authority.

4 Judgment in Case C-85/85 Commission v Belgium [1986] ECR 1149, paragraph 21.

5 Ibid.