Background to the complaint

1. The complainant claimed to have received information from a Europol staff member about an irregularity in a staff selection procedure — in particular, that the successful candidate in a selection procedure had not met one of the eligibility criteria as established in the vacancy notice, as they did not have the required minimum years of work experience.

2. According to the vacancy notice, to be counted as relevant work experience, the work experience should be “after the award of the diploma”. According to the complainant, the work experience obtained after the issuing of the diploma was not sufficient to fulfil the required minimum years of work experience to be eligible for the post.

3. The complainant also contended that Europol had not followed the proper procedure in taking a decision on the candidate’s eligibility.

The inquiry

4. The Ombudsman opened an inquiry into how Europol had assessed the candidate’s eligibility. In the course of the inquiry, the Ombudsman received a written reply from Europol and, subsequently, the comments of the complainant in response to Europol’s reply.

5. The Ombudsman inquiry team also inspected Europol’s file on this case, including the relevant supporting documents from the candidate’s application concerning their education and professional experience, and received replies from members of the selection committee. As some of this material is confidential, the Ombudsman cannot refer to it in detail but has drawn on it in order to issue her findings in this case.

The university diploma

Arguments presented to the Ombudsman

6. The complainant argued that, according to the applicable rules and EU case-law, in order to be eligible, only work experience after the diploma was issued should be taken into account, which was not done in this case. They further alleged that the candidate’s employer may have attempted to influence the decision by sending a further certificate to Europol stating when the candidate had started working after their studies.

7. Europol stated that the selection committee had duly considered the date on which the diploma had been issued, the month specified on the diploma marking the end of studies, and had decided that the candidate was eligible. They decided that the month of the end of studies, which was over a year prior to the certificate being issued, should be taken as the starting point for eligible work experience. While only one diploma was central to evaluating the length of the candidate’s work experience, the candidate also supplied two other diplomas relating to other studies at the same university. For two of the three diplomas included in his application, the diplomas were issued a significant amount of time after the related studies had ended. The selection committee took the view that this demonstrated that when the diplomas were issued was not connected with the end of the studies.

The Ombudsman's assessment

8. According to EU case-law, selection committees are bound by the notice of competition, as published.[1] As mentioned above, the vacancy notice in this case specified that the eligible professional experience should begin “after the award of the diploma”, but the complainant and Europol disagreed on whether this referred to the issuance of the diploma or the end of the studies. However, it is not clear that “the award of the diploma” must necessarily be equated with the issuance of a certificate, provided that the date of the award is specified in another way.

9. The Ombudsman’s inspection confirmed that the relevant diploma stated that the candidate’s studies had ended more than a year before the university issued the diploma. As such, the Ombudsman considers reasonable Europol’s explanation that the selection committee took into account the considerable time-lag with which the university had issued certificates to the candidate for completed studies on more than one occasion.

10. Furthermore, the Ombudsman inspected the transcripts of the candidate’s study courses and established that the candidate had completed their studies over a year before the issuance date of the diploma. The Ombudsman also inspected a certificate, signed by the candidate’s employer, attesting that the candidate had begun working directly after completing their studies. Regarding the complainant’s claim that this certificate had been sent to Europol in an irregular manner and may have influenced the selection procedure, the Ombudsman notes that nothing in the applicable rules prevents a candidate from requesting supplementary evidence from an employer to support their application. Europol’s recruitment guidelines[2] require candidates to provide documentary evidence of professional experience. Furthermore, the selection committee did not refer to this certificate in its argumentation, but rather relied on the diploma itself.  

The procedure followed by Europol

Arguments presented to the Ombudsman

11. The complainant said that Europol had failed to follow the applicable procedure in how it decided on the candidate’s eligibility. According to the applicable rules, the selection committee should decide on the eligibility of candidates, while its administrative services should be involved in conducting preliminary eligibility checks. The complainant alleged that the selection committee had not taken the decision on the eligibility of the candidate in question, but rather that Europol’s management had taken the decision and later imposed it on the selection committee.

12. Europol stated that the procedure followed to decide on the candidate’s eligibility was in line with the applicable rules. Europol set up a selection committee that decided which candidates were eligible for the post, based on the criteria set out in the vacancy notice. Europol’s human resources department supported this process by first providing a preliminary view of eligible applicants, based solely on their applications. At the end of the procedure, the selection committee drew up a duly reasoned report that included its findings in relation to the eligibility of the candidates. In reply to the Ombudsman, the members of the selection committee confirmed that they, as a committee, had substantively discussed the eligibility of the candidate and the disputed diploma, and had taken into account the question of the issuance date, and had decided that the candidate was indeed eligible for the position.

The Ombudsman's assessment

13. According to EU case-law[3], a selection committee is constituted as an independent entity and it should take decisions on selection procedures in an autonomous manner. The information obtained by the Ombudsman during the inquiry does not indicate that the members of the selection committee failed to act independently during their discussions and in reaching their decision on the eligibility. As such, there is no evidence that the selection committee was unduly influenced in deciding on the eligibility of the candidates.

Conclusion

Based on the inquiry, the Ombudsman closes this case with the following conclusion[4]:

There was no maladministration in how the EU Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) assessed the candidate’s eligibility.

The complainant and Europol will be informed of this decision.

Tina Nilsson
Head of the Case-handling Unit

Strasbourg, 29/11/2024

 

[1] Judgment of the General Court (Fourth Chamber) of 10 November 2021, Spisto v Commission, T‑572/20, https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=249038&mode=req&pageIndex=1&dir=&occ=first&part=1&text=&doclang=FR&cid=7392574 (paragraph 42)

[2] https://www.europol.europa.eu/cms/sites/default/files/documents/Europol_Recruitment_Guidelines%20for%20Temporary%20and%20Contract%20Agents.pdf

[3] Judgement of the European Union Civil Service Tribunal of 6 October 2015, FE v Commission,  F‑119/14, https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=169201&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=8151754

[4] This complaint has been dealt with under delegated case handling, in accordance with the Decision of the European Ombudsman adopting Implementing Provisions