8The applicant contends that the action is admissible. She first draws the Court's attention to the fact that she seeks the annulment not of the competition itself, but merely of the decision of the Selection Board not to admit her. Any candidate may challenge a selection board's final decision, which concerns him or her directly and individually, and at the same time contest the legality of all the procedural steps leading to that decision. She bases her argument on the approach taken by the Court in, inter alia, Case 34/65 Alfieri v Parliament ([1965] ECR 261, at p. 266) and explained in the following terms by Advocate General Gand in his Opinion in that case: ‘Recruitment is a complex administrative operation. It consists of a necessary series of decisions: declaring that a competition will be held, allowing a candidate to enter for it, and going on to the final decision which is the appointment of an official. The persons concerned can without doubt bring complaints against each of these preliminary acts, in so far as they constitute actual administrative decisions, provided that they do so within the prescribed time-limit which starts to run from notification or publication, whichever is the case. But they do not have to do so. They can wait until the final decision against which they may plead the illegality of any one of the decisions contributing to it, even if the time-limit for contesting them directly has expired’ (idem, at p. 270). The applicant cites to the same effect the judgments of the Court of Justice in Ley v Commission (Joined Cases 12/64 and 29/64 [1965] ECR 107, at p. 118), in Rauch v Commission (Case 16/64 [1965] ECR 135, at p. 143), in Alvino and Others v Commission (Joined Cases 18/64 and 19/64 [1965] ECR 789, at p. 797) and in Costacurta v Commission (Case 78/71 [1972] ECR 163).
Source: EUR-Lex, © European Union, 1998-2026. Reuse authorised under Decision 2011/833/EU.