Judgment_paragraph 70 · PO and Others v European External Action Service (T-729/16)

70As is apparent from those travaux préparatoires, the third country statutory ceiling was introduced in order to avoid excessive expenditure as a result of reimbursing education costs. The applicants’ thesis does not take sufficient account of the existence of that ceiling or of the decision by the EU legislature that, in principle, reimbursements of education costs should not exceed that ceiling. Against that background, it is necessary to bear in mind that the education costs required in order to obtain suitable education in a third country may depend on factors beyond the control of the EEAS, such as exchange rates or the demand for those forms of education. By providing for the third country statutory ceiling, the EU legislature sought to ensure that the EEAS budget did not have to bear excessive expenditure resulting from such factors. A construction of the second sentence of Article 15 of Annex X to the Staff Regulations to the effect that, in exceptional cases within the meaning of that provision, there was an unlimited right to the reimbursement of education expenses exceeding the third country statutory ceiling, irrespective of the consequences for the EEAS budget, would fail to take that objective into account.