Judgment_paragraph 13 · Alain Libéros v European Commission (C-171/00 P)

13In that regard, the grounds of the judgment of the Court of First Instance read as follows:48 The applicant states that his professional experience should have been assessed not on the date on which the offer of employment was made, but on the date on which the contract of employment took effect, 1 July 1995. It is therefore necessary to examine whether, having regard to the circumstances of the case, Article 2 of the decision of 1 September 1983, as applied individually in the present case by the Commission, which takes into account only the professional experience gained prior to the offer of employment, infringes the aims of Article 31 of the Staff Regulations.49 In that regard, it is apparent from the judgment of the Court of First Instance in Monaco v Parliament (T-92/96 [1997] ECRSC I-A-195 and II-573, paragraph 46), that the “exercise of the discretion conferred on the appointing authority by Article 31(2) of the Staff Regulations may, according to the case-law, be regulated by internal decisions, such as the new internal directives issued by the Parliament. There is nothing in principle to prohibit that authority from establishing, by an internal decision of a general nature, rules for the exercise of the discretion conferred on it by the Staff Regulations. ... Such an internal directive must be regarded as a guiding rule of conduct which the administration imposes on itself and from which it may not depart without stating the reasons for doing so, since otherwise the principle of equal treatment would be infringed ...”50 The decision of 15 March 1996 applies an internal decision of a general nature, namely the decision of 1 September 1983 which expressly states, in the third paragraph of Article 2, the date chosen for the purpose of calculating the professional experience taken into account for classification, namely the date on which the offer of employment is made.51 That rule of conduct is consistent with the purposes of the Staff Regulations, both on administrative and substantive grounds.52 First, it is not possible to take account, when making an offer of employment, of any professional experience that may be acquired in the period between the date on which that offer is made and the date on which the candidate takes up his post.53 Second, there is normally very little time between the offer of employment being made and its being sent to the candidate or between its being sent and the offer being accepted or refused.54 Third, the date on which the contract is signed and the date on which the person concerned takes up his post are not generally very far apart.55 Last, to require the institution to review the terms of the offer of employment after it has been accepted by the person concerned in order to take account of professional experience acquired between the date on which the offer was made and the date on which he actually takes up his post would allow him to postpone taking up his post in order to obtain a better classification, without objective reason or the possibility of effective control by the institution.56 As for the applicant's argument regarding the judgment in Joined Cases T-18/89 and T-24/89 Tagaras v Court of Justice [1991] ECR II-53, it should be pointed out that the circumstances of the present case are different from those which gave rise to that judgment. In that case, there was not, in particular, any general decision relating to appointment in grade and classification in step on recruitment. Furthermore, the defendant had taken the date on which the candidate submitted his application — a different and much earlier date than the one taken by the Commission in the present case — in order to evaluate the professional experience of the person concerned. That judgment is therefore irrelevant to the present case.57 The Commission was therefore entitled, in its decision of 15 March 1996, to fix the date on which the offer of employment was made as the final date for taking into account professional experience, in accordance with its decision of 1 September 1983.’