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Draft recommendation to the European Commission in complaint 398/97/(VK)/GG
Recommendation
Case 398/97/GG - Opened on Wednesday | 09 July 1997 - Recommendation on Thursday | 04 November 1999 - Decision on Friday | 09 June 2000
(Made in accordance with Article 3 (6) of the Statute of the Ombudsman.(9))
Dear Mr M.,
On 13 May 1997 you lodged a complaint with the European Ombudsman against the European Commission concerning the violation of European and national labour law by the latter. The Commission sent its opinion on this complaint on 23 October 1997. On 29 December 1997, you sent me your observations on the opinion of the Commission.
In letters of 7 September 1997 and 26 April 1998, you stressed that you needed a reference from the Commission regarding your work for the latter.
On 3 October 1998 you provided further information regarding your complaint to me.
On 18 November 1998 I met with you, Mrs Rosemarie Wemheuer MEP and Mrs Edith Müller MEP.
On 11 January 1999, I sent a request for further information to the Commission to which the latter replied on 29 March 1999. You sent me your comments on the Commission's reply on 10 May 1999. On 9 June 1999, I sent a second request for further information to the Commission. The Commission sent its reply to this request on 6 August 1999. You sent me your comments on the Commission's reply on 6 September 1999.
I am writing now to let you know the results of the inquiries that have been made.
The most important facts alleged by the complainant may be summarised as follows:
The complainant applied for a job at the Commission and was offered a post within its Directorate-General V which is based in Luxembourg. The complainant was told by the Commission that for budgetary reasons he would have to be paid by a private company which had entered into a contract with the Commission, and that the duration of the contract would be limited until the end of the year to start with. The contract was handed over to the complainant by the private company in the offices of the Commission. In this contract, the company figured as the employer. Neither the type of work nor the place where it was to be carried out were specified but it was indicated that the tasks of the employee would be determined directly by the Commission. The complainant started to work in April 1994. A few months later, following a restructuring in the services concerned, the complainant was charged with working on the control of the transposition into national law of Directive no. 92/29/EC and the handling of legal and other related issues.
In December 1994 the complainant received a new contract limited to three months (January to March 1995). The contract corresponded to the one he had previously signed. However, the contract named as the employer another firm with which the complainant up to that moment had not had any contact. Three months later, the same firm sent the complainant an identical contract for a further nine months.
At the beginning of 1996, the complainant received a new contract. This contract for the first time failed to refer to the Commission and mentioned the seat of the firm (Senningerberg in Luxembourg) as being the place of employment. However, the complainant kept his office at the Commission.
The complainant received his instructions concerning his work exclusively from the Commission. His job was integrated into the regular work of the unit. The role of the firms with which he had concluded the above-mentioned contracts was restricted to the transmission of his monthly salary, the payment of taxes and social security contributions and the receipt of his holiday lists sent by mail.
After the complainant had raised the problem of the legality of his employment within his Directorate, he was informed that his contract would not be extended. The complainant addressed himself to the Director-General of DG V and the President of the Commission, but without success.
On the basis of the above, the complainant makes the following allegations:
His employment situation had to be regarded as illegal from November 1994 onwards at the latest. While he was officially working as an employee of a company which had concluded a contract for the provision of services with the Commission, he was in fact carrying out tasks which should have been carried out by Commission staff. The construction used for his employment had been chosen by the Commission with a view to avoiding the application of the Staff Regulations or the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants. The Commission had thus infringed Community law in so far as his employment situation was concerned. The Commission had also infringed Luxembourg labour law.
The Commission's opinion
In its opinion, the Commission claimed that the complainant had been given various fixed-term contracts by firms outside the Commission for the purpose of providing the Commission with "specific supplementary technical expertise" in order to help it perform its tasks in accordance with the provisions of its "Code of Conduct"(1). The complainant had not been employed by the Commission.
The complainant's observations
In his observations, the complainant maintained his complaint. He accepted that the Commission's "Code of Conduct" contained very good provisions but insisted that these had not been respected in his case. He had not worked "independently" but had had the position of a de facto employee of the Commission. In his view, the Commission's reply failed to address the relevant questions.
The Commission's reply to the Ombudsman's first request for further information
In its reply to the request for further information which the Ombudsman had sent to it on 11 January 1999, the Commission made the following comments:
According to the judgment of the Court of Justice in the Mulfinger case(2), the criterion for judging the legality of a direct contract under national law was whether the tasks entrusted to the employee were permanent tasks essential for the functioning of the Community civil service. However, the complainant had only provided "one-off assistance"(3). In so far as the general provisions on the relations between the Commission and certain categories of staff were concerned, the tasks carried out by the complainant required temporary and specific expertise entirely in line with Sections II and III of the Code of Conduct of October 1994. The working conditions under the contract were extra muros. There was no employer/employee relationship between the Commission and the complainant. The relevant provisions of Luxembourg labour law applied to the company which employed the complainant and not to the Commission.
The Commission's reply to the Ombudsman's second request for further information
In its reply to the Ombudsman's second request for further information of 9 June 1999, the Commission made the following comments:
The documents relating to the case, including those supplied by the complainant, fully supported the Commission's position. The responsibility to supervise the implementation of directives by member states belongs to Commission officials and cannot be delegated. The facts set out by the complainant did not show that anything of the sort had happened here. The complainant provided technical assistance to the officials responsible. External advisers were hired precisely because they had expertise which was not systematically available within the Community public service.
1 Illegality of the employment situation of the complainant under EU law
1.1 The complainant alleges that his employment situation (that is to say the fact that he worked for the Commission under a contract of employment concluded with a private company which, in turn, had concluded a contract with the Commission) was illegal under EU law. He claims that the work carried out by him should have been carried out by Commission staff.
1.2 The Commission replies that the complainant had only provided "one-off" technical assistance to the officials responsible, had worked under the supervision of the latter and had at no time been involved in the resulting decisions relating to the conformity of national law with Community law. The Commission claimed furthermore that it had fully complied with the provisions of its Code of Conduct adopted in October 1994 in the present case.
1.3 The Commission's Code of Conduct provides that Community public service tasks are to be performed exclusively by officials or by members of the temporary staff of the Communities. According to the Code, 'public service tasks' are "those connected with the functions of the Institution deriving from the powers conferred on it by the Treaties or by secondary legislation." Always according to the Code, they "include tasks involving (...) control (notably monitoring compliance with Community law)"(4). The decisive criterion allowing a conclusion as to whether or not a public service task is concerned is thus represented by the nature of the services concerned.
1.4 The duty imposed by Article 211 (formerly Article 155) of the EC Treaty on the Commission to ensure that the provisions of this Treaty and the measures taken by the institutions pursuant thereto are applied constitutes one of the functions which are assigned to the Commission and are thus to be carried out by the officials of the Commission, that is to say, by staff employed under the Staff Regulations or the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants. On the other hand, the Commission claims that even in this area it can resort to other means in order to obtain "expertise which is not (...) available within the Community public service".
1.5 The Commission claims that the complainant carried out his duties under the control of Commission officials and that his work could thus not be considered as forming part of a public service task. However, the fact that the complainant was working under the control or supervision of Commission officials does not appear to be incompatible with his claim that he participated in a function assigned to the Commission by the EC Treaty. Given that the Commission is structured hierarchically, control is immanent in the process leading up to the adoption of a position or decision. A Commission official working on the control of the implementation of a given directive certainly also has to work under the supervision of his superiors. The question as to whether the complainant's tasks were "permanent" in nature or whether the complainant provided what the Commission referred to as "one-off assistance" would not appear to be relevant, either. The case-law of the Community courts refers to the nature of the task and not its duration as the decisive criterion(5). This also appears to be the view which the Commission itself has adopted in its Code of Conduct where it distinguishes between "public service tasks" (which are to be reserved to Commission staff) and "non-permanent tasks", making it clear that the latter are tasks other than "public service tasks"(6).
1.6 It is therefore important to look at the nature of the work carried out by the complainant in the context of the control of the implementation of Directive 92/29. The Commission has stressed on several occasions that the complainant only provided "technical assistance" to the Commission officials. Section III 3 a) of the Commission's Code of Conduct provides that the Commission may conclude a contract for the provision of conceptual or advisory services with a third party if the relevant tasks cannot, by reason of their technical nature, be provided by Commission staff. However, the Commission has failed to specify the exact nature of the "technical assistance" to be provided by the complainant (or the company employing him) and to explain why it could not be provided by Commission staff. The complainant's claim that he checked the implementation of Directive 92/29 by comparing the texts of the national laws concerned in languages which neither he nor his hierarchy mastered in close co-operation with the translation services has not been challenged by the Commission. There does not appear to be any clear evidence to prove that the complainant's work in this context differed materially from the work of a civil servant in charge of controlling the implementation of a directive by member states. The Ombudsman thus concludes that the evidence concerning the nature of the complainant's work would appear to support the latter's claim according to which he had carried out tasks which should have been reserved to Commission staff in accordance with the Code of Conduct.
1.7 This conclusion is confirmed by several circumstantial factors.
1.8 First, several of the documents submitted by the complainant allow the conclusion that instructions relating to the work of the complainant were given directly by the Commission, and not by the companies with which the complainant had entered into contracts of employment. The Commission has not been able to explain this discrepancy between the formal legal position and the practical reality.
1.9 Second, the complainant has given a detailed description of how he came to work for the Commission. The Commission has not made any substantial comment on these allegations.
1.10 Third, the evidence available strongly suggests that the employment situation of the complainant was not extra muros as claimed by the Commission. Although the issue is without importance for the question as to whether or not the complainant carried out tasks which should have been reserved to Commission staff, the fact remains that according to the complainant's allegations the Commission appears even to have taken steps to camouflage the presence of external staff on its premises. The Commission has refrained from making any substantial comments on these allegations which appear to be confirmed by the documents submitted by the complainant.
1.11 Finally, the Commission's claim that its actions had been "entirely in line with Sections II and III of the October 1994 Code of Conduct" would not appear to be well-founded. There are at least two provisions in this Code which do not appear to have been respected in this case. First, according to the Code the conditions for the execution of contracts with third parties must not lead to the distortion of these contracts or the possibility that they could be qualified as contracts for the loan of personnel or labour(7). Second, the Code provides that external staff have to carry out their work outside the Commission's offices, and that the presence of such persons in the Commission's offices must be strictly limited and justified by the material impossibility to carry out the work elsewhere(8).
1.12 In view of the above, the Ombudsman arrives at the conclusion that the employment of the complainant on the basis of a contract of employment with a private company which, in turn, had entered into a contract with the Commission, was not compatible with the principles which can be deduced from the Commission's own Code of Conduct and thus constituted an instance of maladministration. Given that, because of the Commission's and the complainant's opposite opinions, it was not possible to find a friendly solution between the parties on this point, the Ombudsman makes the draft recommendation set out below.
2 Compatibility with national labour law
2.1 The complainant claims that his employment was in contradiction with Luxembourg labour law.
2.2 The Commission claims that the relevant statute applied to the company which employed the complainant and not to the Commission.
2.3 It is good administrative practice for the Commission to comply with the relevant provisions of national law. However, the Ombudsman considers that it is not appropriate for him to examine whether the Commission has respected the provisions of the said Luxembourg law in the case of the complainant. The complainant has referred to the contents of the Luxembourg law which he alleges the Commission to have infringed in rather general terms. The Commission has refrained from making any comments whatsoever on the contents of this law. Neither of the parties has provided the Ombudsman with the text of the relevant statute. In view of these circumstances, it is neither appropriate nor necessary for the Ombudsman to examine this allegation of the complainant.
3 Conclusion
3.1 On the basis of the European Ombudsman's inquiries into this complaint, it appears that the employment of the complainant on the basis of a contract concluded with a private company which, in turn, had concluded a contract with the Commission was not compatible with the relevant rules of the Commission's Code of Conduct and thus constituted an instance of maladministration.
3.2 The complainant ceased to work for the Commission in 1996. However, the effects of the behaviour complained of do not appear to have ceased. The complainant still has not obtained a reference from the Commission concerning the period of time while he was working for it.
In view of these conclusions, and given that it was not possible to find a friendly solution between the parties on this point, the Ombudsman makes the following draft recommendation to the European Commission:
The Commission of the European Communities will be informed of this decision and the draft recommendation which it contains. In accordance with Article 3 (6) of the Statute of the Ombudsman, the Commission shall send a detailed opinion before 29 February 2000. The detailed opinion could consist of the acceptance of the Ombudsman's draft recommendation and a description of how it has been implemented.
Yours sincerely
Jacob SÖDERMAN
Strasbourg, 4 November 1999
Dear Mr M.,
On 13 May 1997 you lodged a complaint with the European Ombudsman against the European Commission concerning the violation of European and national labour law by the latter. The Commission sent its opinion on this complaint on 23 October 1997. On 29 December 1997, you sent me your observations on the opinion of the Commission.
In letters of 7 September 1997 and 26 April 1998, you stressed that you needed a reference from the Commission regarding your work for the latter.
On 3 October 1998 you provided further information regarding your complaint to me.
On 18 November 1998 I met with you, Mrs Rosemarie Wemheuer MEP and Mrs Edith Müller MEP.
On 11 January 1999, I sent a request for further information to the Commission to which the latter replied on 29 March 1999. You sent me your comments on the Commission's reply on 10 May 1999. On 9 June 1999, I sent a second request for further information to the Commission. The Commission sent its reply to this request on 6 August 1999. You sent me your comments on the Commission's reply on 6 September 1999.
I am writing now to let you know the results of the inquiries that have been made.
THE COMPLAINT
The most important facts alleged by the complainant may be summarised as follows:
The complainant applied for a job at the Commission and was offered a post within its Directorate-General V which is based in Luxembourg. The complainant was told by the Commission that for budgetary reasons he would have to be paid by a private company which had entered into a contract with the Commission, and that the duration of the contract would be limited until the end of the year to start with. The contract was handed over to the complainant by the private company in the offices of the Commission. In this contract, the company figured as the employer. Neither the type of work nor the place where it was to be carried out were specified but it was indicated that the tasks of the employee would be determined directly by the Commission. The complainant started to work in April 1994. A few months later, following a restructuring in the services concerned, the complainant was charged with working on the control of the transposition into national law of Directive no. 92/29/EC and the handling of legal and other related issues.
In December 1994 the complainant received a new contract limited to three months (January to March 1995). The contract corresponded to the one he had previously signed. However, the contract named as the employer another firm with which the complainant up to that moment had not had any contact. Three months later, the same firm sent the complainant an identical contract for a further nine months.
At the beginning of 1996, the complainant received a new contract. This contract for the first time failed to refer to the Commission and mentioned the seat of the firm (Senningerberg in Luxembourg) as being the place of employment. However, the complainant kept his office at the Commission.
The complainant received his instructions concerning his work exclusively from the Commission. His job was integrated into the regular work of the unit. The role of the firms with which he had concluded the above-mentioned contracts was restricted to the transmission of his monthly salary, the payment of taxes and social security contributions and the receipt of his holiday lists sent by mail.
After the complainant had raised the problem of the legality of his employment within his Directorate, he was informed that his contract would not be extended. The complainant addressed himself to the Director-General of DG V and the President of the Commission, but without success.
On the basis of the above, the complainant makes the following allegations:
His employment situation had to be regarded as illegal from November 1994 onwards at the latest. While he was officially working as an employee of a company which had concluded a contract for the provision of services with the Commission, he was in fact carrying out tasks which should have been carried out by Commission staff. The construction used for his employment had been chosen by the Commission with a view to avoiding the application of the Staff Regulations or the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants. The Commission had thus infringed Community law in so far as his employment situation was concerned. The Commission had also infringed Luxembourg labour law.
THE INQUIRY
The Commission's opinion
In its opinion, the Commission claimed that the complainant had been given various fixed-term contracts by firms outside the Commission for the purpose of providing the Commission with "specific supplementary technical expertise" in order to help it perform its tasks in accordance with the provisions of its "Code of Conduct"(1). The complainant had not been employed by the Commission.
The complainant's observations
In his observations, the complainant maintained his complaint. He accepted that the Commission's "Code of Conduct" contained very good provisions but insisted that these had not been respected in his case. He had not worked "independently" but had had the position of a de facto employee of the Commission. In his view, the Commission's reply failed to address the relevant questions.
FURTHER INQUIRIES
The Commission's reply to the Ombudsman's first request for further information
In its reply to the request for further information which the Ombudsman had sent to it on 11 January 1999, the Commission made the following comments:
According to the judgment of the Court of Justice in the Mulfinger case(2), the criterion for judging the legality of a direct contract under national law was whether the tasks entrusted to the employee were permanent tasks essential for the functioning of the Community civil service. However, the complainant had only provided "one-off assistance"(3). In so far as the general provisions on the relations between the Commission and certain categories of staff were concerned, the tasks carried out by the complainant required temporary and specific expertise entirely in line with Sections II and III of the Code of Conduct of October 1994. The working conditions under the contract were extra muros. There was no employer/employee relationship between the Commission and the complainant. The relevant provisions of Luxembourg labour law applied to the company which employed the complainant and not to the Commission.
The Commission's reply to the Ombudsman's second request for further information
In its reply to the Ombudsman's second request for further information of 9 June 1999, the Commission made the following comments:
The documents relating to the case, including those supplied by the complainant, fully supported the Commission's position. The responsibility to supervise the implementation of directives by member states belongs to Commission officials and cannot be delegated. The facts set out by the complainant did not show that anything of the sort had happened here. The complainant provided technical assistance to the officials responsible. External advisers were hired precisely because they had expertise which was not systematically available within the Community public service.
THE DECISION
1 Illegality of the employment situation of the complainant under EU law
1.1 The complainant alleges that his employment situation (that is to say the fact that he worked for the Commission under a contract of employment concluded with a private company which, in turn, had concluded a contract with the Commission) was illegal under EU law. He claims that the work carried out by him should have been carried out by Commission staff.
1.2 The Commission replies that the complainant had only provided "one-off" technical assistance to the officials responsible, had worked under the supervision of the latter and had at no time been involved in the resulting decisions relating to the conformity of national law with Community law. The Commission claimed furthermore that it had fully complied with the provisions of its Code of Conduct adopted in October 1994 in the present case.
1.3 The Commission's Code of Conduct provides that Community public service tasks are to be performed exclusively by officials or by members of the temporary staff of the Communities. According to the Code, 'public service tasks' are "those connected with the functions of the Institution deriving from the powers conferred on it by the Treaties or by secondary legislation." Always according to the Code, they "include tasks involving (...) control (notably monitoring compliance with Community law)"(4). The decisive criterion allowing a conclusion as to whether or not a public service task is concerned is thus represented by the nature of the services concerned.
1.4 The duty imposed by Article 211 (formerly Article 155) of the EC Treaty on the Commission to ensure that the provisions of this Treaty and the measures taken by the institutions pursuant thereto are applied constitutes one of the functions which are assigned to the Commission and are thus to be carried out by the officials of the Commission, that is to say, by staff employed under the Staff Regulations or the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants. On the other hand, the Commission claims that even in this area it can resort to other means in order to obtain "expertise which is not (...) available within the Community public service".
1.5 The Commission claims that the complainant carried out his duties under the control of Commission officials and that his work could thus not be considered as forming part of a public service task. However, the fact that the complainant was working under the control or supervision of Commission officials does not appear to be incompatible with his claim that he participated in a function assigned to the Commission by the EC Treaty. Given that the Commission is structured hierarchically, control is immanent in the process leading up to the adoption of a position or decision. A Commission official working on the control of the implementation of a given directive certainly also has to work under the supervision of his superiors. The question as to whether the complainant's tasks were "permanent" in nature or whether the complainant provided what the Commission referred to as "one-off assistance" would not appear to be relevant, either. The case-law of the Community courts refers to the nature of the task and not its duration as the decisive criterion(5). This also appears to be the view which the Commission itself has adopted in its Code of Conduct where it distinguishes between "public service tasks" (which are to be reserved to Commission staff) and "non-permanent tasks", making it clear that the latter are tasks other than "public service tasks"(6).
1.6 It is therefore important to look at the nature of the work carried out by the complainant in the context of the control of the implementation of Directive 92/29. The Commission has stressed on several occasions that the complainant only provided "technical assistance" to the Commission officials. Section III 3 a) of the Commission's Code of Conduct provides that the Commission may conclude a contract for the provision of conceptual or advisory services with a third party if the relevant tasks cannot, by reason of their technical nature, be provided by Commission staff. However, the Commission has failed to specify the exact nature of the "technical assistance" to be provided by the complainant (or the company employing him) and to explain why it could not be provided by Commission staff. The complainant's claim that he checked the implementation of Directive 92/29 by comparing the texts of the national laws concerned in languages which neither he nor his hierarchy mastered in close co-operation with the translation services has not been challenged by the Commission. There does not appear to be any clear evidence to prove that the complainant's work in this context differed materially from the work of a civil servant in charge of controlling the implementation of a directive by member states. The Ombudsman thus concludes that the evidence concerning the nature of the complainant's work would appear to support the latter's claim according to which he had carried out tasks which should have been reserved to Commission staff in accordance with the Code of Conduct.
1.7 This conclusion is confirmed by several circumstantial factors.
1.8 First, several of the documents submitted by the complainant allow the conclusion that instructions relating to the work of the complainant were given directly by the Commission, and not by the companies with which the complainant had entered into contracts of employment. The Commission has not been able to explain this discrepancy between the formal legal position and the practical reality.
1.9 Second, the complainant has given a detailed description of how he came to work for the Commission. The Commission has not made any substantial comment on these allegations.
1.10 Third, the evidence available strongly suggests that the employment situation of the complainant was not extra muros as claimed by the Commission. Although the issue is without importance for the question as to whether or not the complainant carried out tasks which should have been reserved to Commission staff, the fact remains that according to the complainant's allegations the Commission appears even to have taken steps to camouflage the presence of external staff on its premises. The Commission has refrained from making any substantial comments on these allegations which appear to be confirmed by the documents submitted by the complainant.
1.11 Finally, the Commission's claim that its actions had been "entirely in line with Sections II and III of the October 1994 Code of Conduct" would not appear to be well-founded. There are at least two provisions in this Code which do not appear to have been respected in this case. First, according to the Code the conditions for the execution of contracts with third parties must not lead to the distortion of these contracts or the possibility that they could be qualified as contracts for the loan of personnel or labour(7). Second, the Code provides that external staff have to carry out their work outside the Commission's offices, and that the presence of such persons in the Commission's offices must be strictly limited and justified by the material impossibility to carry out the work elsewhere(8).
1.12 In view of the above, the Ombudsman arrives at the conclusion that the employment of the complainant on the basis of a contract of employment with a private company which, in turn, had entered into a contract with the Commission, was not compatible with the principles which can be deduced from the Commission's own Code of Conduct and thus constituted an instance of maladministration. Given that, because of the Commission's and the complainant's opposite opinions, it was not possible to find a friendly solution between the parties on this point, the Ombudsman makes the draft recommendation set out below.
2 Compatibility with national labour law
2.1 The complainant claims that his employment was in contradiction with Luxembourg labour law.
2.2 The Commission claims that the relevant statute applied to the company which employed the complainant and not to the Commission.
2.3 It is good administrative practice for the Commission to comply with the relevant provisions of national law. However, the Ombudsman considers that it is not appropriate for him to examine whether the Commission has respected the provisions of the said Luxembourg law in the case of the complainant. The complainant has referred to the contents of the Luxembourg law which he alleges the Commission to have infringed in rather general terms. The Commission has refrained from making any comments whatsoever on the contents of this law. Neither of the parties has provided the Ombudsman with the text of the relevant statute. In view of these circumstances, it is neither appropriate nor necessary for the Ombudsman to examine this allegation of the complainant.
3 Conclusion
3.1 On the basis of the European Ombudsman's inquiries into this complaint, it appears that the employment of the complainant on the basis of a contract concluded with a private company which, in turn, had concluded a contract with the Commission was not compatible with the relevant rules of the Commission's Code of Conduct and thus constituted an instance of maladministration.
3.2 The complainant ceased to work for the Commission in 1996. However, the effects of the behaviour complained of do not appear to have ceased. The complainant still has not obtained a reference from the Commission concerning the period of time while he was working for it.
In view of these conclusions, and given that it was not possible to find a friendly solution between the parties on this point, the Ombudsman makes the following draft recommendation to the European Commission:
- The Commission should take the necessary steps in order to remedy the illegality of the employment situation of the complainant. It should therefore issue the complainant with a reference for the period of time during which he worked for the Commission.
The Commission of the European Communities will be informed of this decision and the draft recommendation which it contains. In accordance with Article 3 (6) of the Statute of the Ombudsman, the Commission shall send a detailed opinion before 29 February 2000. The detailed opinion could consist of the acceptance of the Ombudsman's draft recommendation and a description of how it has been implemented.
Yours sincerely
Jacob SÖDERMAN
(1) Code of Conduct containing General Rules Governing Relations between Commission Departments and certain Categories of Staff, adopted in October 1994.
(2) Case C-249/87, Mulfinger and others v. Commission, [1989], ECR 4127.
(3) In the French original, "une assistance ponctuelle".
(4) Code of Conduct, Section II.
(5) Cf. the Mulfinger judgment loc.sit., paragraph 14.
(6) Code of Conduct, Section II.
(7) " The conditions under which service contracts are performed must not be such as to alter the nature of the contract and possibly result in its being reclassified as a manpower supply contract or an employment contract" (Section II C 2 of the Code of Good Conduct.
(8) "The presence of the staff concerned on Commission premises must be strictly limited to cases where it is physically impossible for the work to be performed elsewhere" (Section III C 3 a of the Code.
(9) Decision 94/262 of 9 March 1994 of the European Parliament on the Regulations and General Conditions Governing the Performance of the Ombudsman's Duties, 1994 OJ L 113/15.