Strasbourg, 6 December 2006

Dear Mr B.,

On 5 July 2006, you submitted a complaint to the European Ombudsman against the European Personnel Selection Office ("EPSO"), concerning Open Competition EPSO/AD/47/06 (Administrators (AD5) with Romanian citizenship in the fields of European public administration, Law, Economics, Audit).

On the complaint form, you indicated that you complained on behalf of Ms Noémi Dálnoki. However, there was no documentary evidence attached to the complaint that could prove that you were empowered to act for Ms Dálnoki. Therefore, I considered it appropriate to regard you as the complainant, and not Ms Dálnoki.

On 7 August 2006, I forwarded the complaint to the Director of EPSO with a request to provide an opinion by 30 November 2006.

By letter of 23 October 2006, the Director of EPSO informed me that it appeared that Ms Dálnoky had submitted an application to the Civil Service Tribunal, invoking the same allegations as in your present complaint.

On 14 November 2006, I forwarded the letter from the Director of EPSO to you, and asked you to comment on EPSO's statement that the application submitted by Ms Dálnoky to the Civil Service Tribunal concerned the same issues as the present complaint.

On 20 November 2006, you contacted my services by telephone and confirmed that Ms Dálnoky had submitted an application to the Civil Service Tribunal (Pending Case F-120/06 Dálnoky v Commission), concerning the same allegations as in the present complaint. On the same day, you forwarded to me by e-mail a copy of the application submitted to the Civil Service Tribunal.

After a careful examination of the application, I found that the application indeed concerns the same allegations as in your present complaint.

In this regard, I would like to recall that Article 195 of the Treaty establishing the European Community empowers the Ombudsman to receive complaints "concerning instances of maladministration in the activities of the Community institutions or bodies (...) except where the alleged facts are or have been the subject of legal proceedings." Moreover, Article 1(3) of the Ombudsman's Statute provides that "[t]he Ombudsman may not intervene in cases before courts" and Article 2(7) of the same Statute provides that "when the Ombudsman, because of legal proceedings in progress or concluded concerning the facts which have been put forward, has to declare a complaint inadmissible or terminate consideration of it, the outcome of any inquiries he has carried out up to that point shall be filed without further action."

Since your complaint concerns allegations that are now the subject of legal proceedings before the Civil Service Tribunal, I have decided to close my inquiry into your complaint, without further action.

The Director of EPSO will also be informed of this decision.

Yours sincerely,

 

P. Nikiforos DIAMANDOUROS