Judgment No. 4575
Decision
The complaints are dismissed, as is the application to intervene.
Summary
The complaints concern compensation following the refusal to allow the Central Staff Committee to publish two documents on the EPO’s Intranet.
Judgment keywords
Keywords
staff representative; moral damages; complaint dismissed; plenary judgment
Consideration 7
Extract:
As to the receivability of the complainants’ request for an award of moral damages in the amount of one euro per staff member, the Tribunal notes that its jurisdiction ratione personae, pursuant to Article II of the Statute, is of an individual nature. The Tribunal can only order that the Organisation pay compensation for damages to the complainants (Article II, paragraph 5, of the Statute of the Tribunal), and not to third parties. For this reason, the Tribunal will not follow Judgment 2857, which underpins the complainants’ argument on this topic.
Reference(s)
ILOAT Judgment(s): 2857
Keywords
receivability of the complaint; cause of action; staff representative; moral damages; third party
Consideration 9
Extract:
According to a recent precedent, decided by the seven judges of the Tribunal, a complainant, acting as a staff representative, is not entitled to an award of moral damages (see Judgment 4550, consideration 20). By their very nature, violations of the rights of staff representatives cannot, under any circumstances, give rise to any personal right to financial compensation.
Depending on the circumstances of the case, a moral injury, due to its nature, can be restored not only by means of a sum of money. While the Tribunal considers that it is beyond its power to order a public apology (see Judgment 2762, consideration 31), it determines that the annulment of the impugned decision can be considered by itself a form of redress of moral injury (see Judgments 1745, consideration 12, and 1481, consideration 8). In a case similar to the present, concerning censorship in violation of freedom of communication, the Tribunal affirmed that the EPO, by requiring prior authorization for the dispatching of mass emails, breached the complainants’ freedom of communication. Nonetheless, in that case, the Tribunal, as to the redress for moral injury, held that the annulment of the impugned decision was in itself a sufficient remedy for any moral injury the complainants may have conceivably suffered (see Judgment 4551, consideration 16).
Similarly, in the present case, it must be held that the […] decision admitting the unlawfulness of the censorship related to the publication of two documents, together with the publicity given to this decision on the Organisation’s website, were already sufficient redress for any moral injury.
Reference(s)
ILOAT Judgment(s): 1481, 1745, 2762, 4550, 4551
Keywords
staff representative; moral damages; satisfaction
Considerations 11-12
Extract:
The Tribunal decides that, although there may have been some inconsistencies regarding this issue in its previous case law, the exclusion of the entitlement of staff representatives to personal financial compensation extends to moral damages resulting from excessive length in the internal appeal proceedings. […]
The complainants lodged their internal appeals only in their capacity as members of the Central Staff Committee. It follows that the injury for the excessive length of the internal appeal proceedings was suffered by the Central Staff Committee and the staff representation as a whole, not by the staff representatives individually.
Keywords
staff representative; moral damages; delay in internal procedure
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