Judgment_paragraph 174 · AX v European Central Bank (F-73/13)

174In that regard, it is settled case-law that the time-limits set out to govern the course of disciplinary proceedings from a temporal point of view are not mandatory, but constitute primarily a rule of sound administration whereby the institution is required to conduct the disciplinary proceedings diligently and act in such a way that each procedural step is taken within a reasonable time following the previous step (judgment in D v Commission, T‑549/93, EU:T:1995:15, paragraph 25). The European Union judicature has indeed stated that, for the purposes of assessing what constitutes a reasonable period within which disciplinary proceedings must be conducted, it must ‘take into consideration only the period which has elapsed between one procedural step and the subsequent step [and that t]hat assessment is a matter separate from the total length of the disciplinary proceedings’ (judgment in Teixeira Neves v Court of Justice, T‑259/97, EU:T:2000:208, paragraph 123 and the case-law cited).