Background to the complaint

1. The complainant is a Portuguese citizen who applied to a staff selection procedure to become a lawyer-linguist^[1] at the Court of Justice of the EU (the Court).

2. She sat the written tests in February 2018. The tests were translation exercises from French to Portuguese and from English to Portuguese.

3. In April 2018, the Court informed her that it had rejected her application. The complainant asked the Court to explain why.

4. In June 2018 the Court provided the complainant with an assessment of how she had performed in the two written translation tests. The assessment mentioned problems of understanding and of translation at a legal and linguistic level, as well as syntax problems, both for the French and the English translation tests. Not satisfied with the Court’s reply, the complainant asked for more information, such as copies of the written tests (both the originals and her translations), the evaluation criteria for the written tests, and the composition of the selection board.

5. In September 2018, the Court provided the complainant with: the original documents in the written French and English tests, as well as copies of the complainant’s translations into Portuguese; an explanation of the selection procedure and of the role of the selection board; a list of the selection criteria used by the individuals responsible for marking the translations; and the minimum mark that was required to pass the written test (60/100).

6. The complainant noticed that some pages in the original documents were missing and thus contacted the Court again in October 2018 to ask for the complete documents.

7. As the Court did not reply, the complainant turned to the Ombudsman in November 2018. In her complaint, she listed a number of issues that she had raised with the Court without having obtained a reply.

The inquiry

8. The Ombudsman opened an inquiry into the complaint that the Court had not informed the complainant of the overall mark that she had obtained; the breakdown of marks per selection criterion; and the names of the selection board members. The inquiry also covered the complainant’s contention that the Court had not provided the missing pages of the written tests.

9. In the course of the inquiry, the Court gave the complainant the requested information and the missing pages. However, the Ombudsman’s inquiry team found that the Court had made a mistake in calculating the overall mark obtained by the complainant. After the inquiry team pursued this matter, the Court provided the correct mark. The complainant also made comments on the Court’s reply.

The Court’s alleged failure to give sufficient information

Arguments presented to the Ombudsman

10. The complainant argued that the Court took too long to reply to her information requests. In her view, the information eventually given to her does not allow her to understand fully how her marks were awarded and why her translation tests obtained low scores. She considers the delays and the lack of information to be regrettable and not up to the standards required of Union institutions.

The Ombudsman's assessment

11. The Ombudsman understands the complainant’s grievance about the time it took the Court to give her feedback on her application. While this was not the central issue in the initial complaint to the Ombudsman, the inquiry revealed that it took the Court on average two to three months to reply to each of the three information requests that she made, one of which was replied to only after the Ombudsman opened an inquiry. It is also regrettable that the Court sent replies that were initially incomplete, which meant that the complainant had to repeat her requests and that the Ombudsman’s inquiry team had to ask for a clarification. The Ombudsman therefore encourages the Court to review how it replies to feedback requests in staff selection procedures to ensure that its replies are as quick, accurate and informative as possible.

12. The Ombudsman considers that the Court has now properly addressed the substance of the complainant’s information request. The Ombudsman welcomes the fact that the Court has disclosed a range of documents related to the tests. The Court has therefore settled the complaint about the lack of information.

13. The complainant argues that she still does not fully understand why she obtained low marks in her translation tests. In this regard, the EU administration has a wide discretion in determining the assessment methods for, and in carrying out the actual assessments in, selection procedures for EU civil servants^[2]. Thus, it is not the role of the Ombudsman to reassess the Court’s marking of the complainant’s translation tests. The Ombudsman can question the assessment only in case of a manifest error^[3]. As the Ombudsman finds no indication of a manifest error of assessment in this case, she will not pursue this aspect further. The mistake by the Court in calculating the complainant’s overall mark did not have any impact on the final decision to reject her application.

Conclusion

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

The Court of Justice of the European Union has properly addressed the substance of the complainant’s information request and thereby settled the matter.

The complainant and the Court will be informed of this decision.

 

Emily O'Reilly
European Ombudsman

Strasbourg, 18/06/2019

 

[1] A lawyer-linguist works on drafting or translating, checking and revising legal texts.

.[2] Judgement of the Court of First Instance of 10 February 2004, T-19/03, Konstantopoulou v Court of Justice, paragraph 48 and 60 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:62003TJ0019&qid=1550837935186&from=EN, and Judgement of the Court of First Instance of 26 January 2005, T-267/05, Roccato v European Commission, paragraphs 48-49 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:62003TJ0267&qid=1550838111391&from=EN.

[3] By analogy, judgment of the Court of First Instance of 31 May 2005, Case T-294/03, Gibault v Commission, paragraph 41 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:62003TJ0294.