Judgment No. 3342
Decision
The complaints are dismissed.
Summary
The complainants, acting as members of the Staff Committee, challenge the competence of the President of the Office to appoint Vice-Presidents on an ad interim basis.
Judgment keywords
Keywords
locus standi; staff representative; complaint dismissed; plenary judgment; en banc review
Considerations 10 and 11
Extract:
"Earlier judgments decide[d] that members of a Staff Committee can invoke the Tribunal’s jurisdiction to enforce rights conferred on them by their terms of appointment or by the Service Regulations. So much is clear from Judgment 1147, consideration 4. This has been recognised in a number of judgments since which have accepted that individual officials can act as representatives to preserve what have been described as “common rights and interests” (see Judgment 2562, consideration 10). However the expression “common rights and interests” is a reference to enforceable legal rights and interests derived from terms of appointment or under the Service Regulations. As the Tribunal said in Judgment 2649, consideration 8, “in order for a complaint submitted to the Tribunal on behalf of a Staff Committee to be receivable, it must allege a breach of guarantees which the Organisation is legally bound to provide to staff who are connected with the Office by an employment contract or who have permanent employment status, this being a sine qua non for the Tribunal’s jurisdiction”. A similar statement of the principle is found in Judgment 3115, consideration 3.
That approach was comparatively recently followed by the Tribunal in determining one of a number of issues about receivability raised in the context of the employment by the EPO of external contractors (see Judgment 2919, consideration 8). Of particular relevance in that judgment for present purposes was the Tribunal’s consideration of a challenge sought to be made to the engagement of external contractors. The complainants, who were permanent employees of the EPO and members of the Munich Staff Committee, sought to raise the question of whether permanent posts should be established in order to carry out the tasks otherwise undertaken by external contractors. The Tribunal said at consideration 6:
“As the creation of permanent posts rests exclusively within the President’s discretion under Article 10(2)(d) of the European Patent Convention, this case is not a complaint alleging the non-observance, in substance or in form, of terms of appointment or the Staff Regulations and is, therefore, irreceivable.”"
Reference(s)
ILOAT Judgment(s): 1147, 2562, 2649, 2919, 3115
Keywords
locus standi; staff representative
Consideration 12
Extract:
"The common rights and interests identified by the complainants may arguably be legitimate interests in a broad political or organisational sense. However they are not rights or interests of a character that are justiciable in the Tribunal."
Keywords
locus standi; staff representative
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