Commission employee wins tribunal case

A European Commission employee persuaded the Civil Service Tribunal last week to annul her 2004 career development review (CDR) which, she argued, unfairly lowered her merit points and wrongly declared her unsuitable to take on work at a higher level.

Maria Magdalena Semeraro is currently employed by the Commission in its directorate-general for administration (DG Admin).

In 2004, while working at DG Budget, Semeraro was promoted to grade C1. When she received her 2004 report from her CDR, she was awarded merit points of 14 out of 20, two points fewer than she had received in her 2003 report. Her report also indicated that she was not suitable to take on duties at a higher level.

After failing to get satisfaction using internal procedures, Semeraro took her case to the tribunal.

Semeraro told the court that the evaluator had submitted an evaluation that was "without any personal consideration" of her merits.

She said she had learned that a colleague, also promoted to the same level, but whose work was seen as being of a lower standard than hers, got the same number of merit points as her.

The Commission argued that Semeraro's merit points reflected her promotion to a level that included many employees with much more experience than her. They argued that a lower score would give Semeraro "an adequate level of motivation".

The tribunal observed, however, that the evaluators should have evaluated her job performance, "to verify whether the level of her performance is really less than that of other civil servants with more seniority in the given grade".

The tribunal ruled that the comments made in Semeraro's CDR "did not permit [her] to know, in a sufficiently clear way, if the reduction of her score had been decided on the basis of an effective evaluation of her performance in grade C1 or had resulted from an automatic adjustment of her score following her promotion".

During the hearing, the Commission acknowledged that the only reason Semeraro was not on a list of employees being considered for promotion was the negative evaluation of her ability to take on duties at a higher level in her CDR.

The tribunal ruled the negative indication made Semeraro's 2004 CDR illegal, as its effect of automatically disqualifying an employee from the promotion process went beyond the scope of the rules setting up that process.

A European Commission employee persuaded the Civil Service Tribunal last week to annul her 2004 career development review (CDR) which, she argued, unfairly lowered her merit points and wrongly declared her unsuitable to take on work at a higher level.