Brussels, 04/02/2011 (Agence Europe) - Publication by the Personnel Selection Office of the European Communities (EPSO) on its internet site of a call for expressions of interest (CEI) for the recruitment of contract staff in only three languages, without proper information being given in the other languages constitutes discrimination among potential candidates on the grounds of language. It its ruling in Case C-205/07, delivered on 3 February, the General Court found in favour of Italy and annulled the CEI at issue (EPSO/CAST/EU/27/07).
The call in question sought to recruit contract staff from all EU countries and required that candidates had a thorough knowledge of one of the 23 official languages of the EU and a satisfactory knowledge of English, French or German, as a second language, which had to be different from the main language. It was, however, published in only English, French and German. Italy took the view that this was not consistent with the principles of non-discrimination, proportionality and multilingualism.
In its ruling, the Court notes that there is no provision or principle of EU law which requires that a CEI must systematically be published on the EPSO website in all the official languages but that, although the administration is entitled to adopt the measures which it deems appropriate in order to govern certain aspects of a CEI, those measures must not lead to discrimination on the basis of language, between the candidates for a specific post. In order to avoid any such discrimination, the administration must adopt appropriate measures to inform all those candidates of the existence of the CEI and of the language versions in which it has been published in full. In the present case, first, the CEI was published, in full, only in English, French and German. Second, the Commission did not provide either for the publication on its site - translated into all the official languages of the European Union - of a notice giving information on the existence and content of the CEI at issue, or for the adoption of other equivalent measures. In those circumstances, the possibility of being informed of the existence of the CEI at issue was not the same for every candidate, irrespective of the source language. By contrast, that CEI may favour candidates of certain nationalities, namely those from member states where English, French or German are official languages. (F.G./transl.rt)