It is not my intention to give a complete chronological account of the elaboration of the Staff Regulations of the Community, since it was experienced by the Court itself as an institution, and since it has doubtless not been forgotten by the Members of the Court; I wish to mention only those aspects which seem essential to the understanding of this action. The problem of the Staff Regulations arose from the beginning out of Article 78 of the Treaty and Article 7 of the Convention on the Transitional Provisions. The third paragraph of the latter article, to which I shall return later, is worded as follows: Until the Committee provided for in Article 78 of the Treaty has decided upon the size of the staff of the Community and has laid down staff regulations, the personnel required shall be engaged on a contractual basis. Thus from the beginning, the nature of the links between the Community and the servants of the four institutions was of a contractual nature. But also from the beginning the idea was accepted that this was only a transitional period and that a system of staff regulations governed by public law should be substituted as soon as possible for the contractual system —as soon as possible meaning as soon as general Staff Regulations of Officials had been drawn up. The Assembly in particular had voted resolutions to that effect, and the Committee of Presidents had started to examine the drawing up of those general Staff Regulations. In the meantime, although they remained fixed term contracts, the nature of the contracts became less and less precarious; they were supplemented by regulations involving firm guarantees (discipline, leave, insurance scheme, etc.) applicable to all the staff of each institution; finally, the period of their validity was fixed in anticipation of the date envisaged for the entry into force of the Staff Regulations. Thus in its judgment in the Kergall case, the Court found that those contracts were by nature contracts governed by public law which are the precursors of the Staff Regulations, and drew from that theory certain legal consequences as to the eligibility of staff in service to be brought within the ambit of the future Staff Regulations.

However, although the drawing up of the Staff Regulations was obviously a condition precedent to their entry into force, it was not the only one. For, in addition to the provisions making up the Staff Regulations properly so-called (general rights and duties of the servants, recruitment, promotion, discipline, leave, pensions, dismissal, positions, etc.), the substitution of a system of staff regulations for a contractual system presupposes the creation of the posts and the administrative services corresponding to the tasks which the administration must perform, and the fixing of the salary scales pertaining thereto. Moreover, it is necessary to lay down the conditions under which servants currently in service can be, according to the accepted form of words, established in the new services, that is, brought within the ambit of the Staff Regulations and appointed to a definite grade and step, without necessarily fulfilling the conditions stipulated in this connexion by the Staff Regulations for the Future. Only after all this work has been carried out can individual measures of implementation be adopted.

However, in addition there was a double problem parallel to all the others: (1) Were those various operations to be common to the four institutions, and if so to what extent? (2) In that connexion, what was to be the role of the Committee of Presidents?

On the first point, it seems that the need not for absolute standardization but for what was described as harmonization was accepted very quickly, on the basis of the following idea: the settlement of similar situations in the same way in the four institutions. Agreement was easily reached to place in this category everything which concerned what I have called the Staff Regulations properly so-called (general rules, recruitment, promotion, discipline, etc.); in relation to those questions, it was even decided in the end to put into force only one set of provisions, the general Staff Regulations of Officials of the Community, common to the four institutions, with only certain implementing rules particular to the institutions being set apart in annexes pertaining to each of them. The same was true of the drawing up of a common scale of grades, each one corresponding to a salary comprised within a maximum and a minimum limit. The various problems raised by the creation of posts, the correspondence between posts and the determination of the grades in which they were to be classified, that is to say the problems of harmonization properly so-called, gave rise to great difficulties of implementation which are at the root of this dispute.

On the second point, namely the role of the Committee of Presidents and the nature and extent of its powers in relation to those of the institutions, in particular those of the Assembly, it was not possible to define any common formula on which all four institutions were in agreement. Proceedings followed a rather empirical course, and it has only become possible since the Staff Regulations have been definitively approved and implemented to form an opinion, on the basis of their provisions, as to the legal system which emerges from them: that was not yet the case on 12 December 1955, the date of the adoption of the decisions the lawfulness of which is in issue.

On that date, the position was as follows:

There follows a list of all the officials of the Assembly, classified by grades and steps. The five applicants are to be found classified therein as follows:

Such was the situation in brief immediately before 12 December 1955. What happened on that day?

Let us stop for a moment at this point — late in the evening of 12 December 1955 — and attempt to see how the situation appears both from the point of view of the Committee of Presidents and from that of the Assembly.

For the latter, it seemed fairly clear: the Assembly confined itself to implementing the decisions of its Bureau by adopting individual orders bringing its servants within the ambit of the Staff Regulations and establishing them in a specific grade and step, and communicating those orders to the persons concerned at the same moment. That action can be explained only if, in the opinion of the Assembly, the Committee of Presidents had already adopted the decisions necessary to render the individual classification of the servants possible, which means that, according to that opinion, the Committee of Presidents had exhausted its power of decision by establishing the scale of grades and steps on 9 May 1955, and that all other operations came within the jurisdiction of the institution. Only one obstacle remained, but it concerned only the implementation of the validly adopted classification decisions: that obstacle was, in the absence of the validly drawn up and published Staff Regulations themselves, an assurance regarding the entry into force of those Staff Regulations in the near future: in that connexion, the decision of the Committee of Presidents declaring that the Staff Regulations were definitively adopted as regards three of the institutions, including the Assembly, appeared sufficient to the Assembly to remove that last obstacle. (In fact, definitive adoption for all four institutions was not to take place until 28 January 1956.) As to the passage concerning the drawing up of the annexes, the Assembly doubtless saw in it only a confirmation of its position of independence, since the minutes merely provided for consultation between the institu tions over harmonizing the provisions, without prejudice to the discretionary nature of the said annexes: such forms of words doubtless meant that the classification tables, as drawn up by the institutions, and at all events by the Assembly for its part, were to be incorporated in Annex I, the drawing up of which was to be preceded, like that of the other annexes, by joint preparatory studies, with each institution moreover entirely reserving its power of final decision.

As regards the Committee of Presidents, one thing is certain, and that is that on 12 December 1955 it had not yet officially taken up any position on the legal problem with which the Court is concerned today. Moreover, none of the three institutions apart from the Assembly thought that it was obliged — or able — to draw up for its own. part a classification table of posts and, still less, to proceed to the establishment and individual classification of its servants. It may therefore be inferred that, in the opinion of the Committee of Presidents as such, the preliminary harmonization work which it had asked the institutions to carry out for the purpose of drawing up the annexes concerned not only the very formulation of the provisions, but also the elaboration of the classification tables designed to be incorporated into Annex I.

It must however be acknowledged that uncertainty, not to say ambiguity, remained. But that ambiguity in its turn was removed as from March 1956; because:

Thus the positions at this point were as follows:

I shall pass very quickly over the following stages which did not bring about any alterations in the positions which had been taken up. Let me point out only that the special committee entrusted by the Committee of Presidents with the harmonization work (known as the Delvaux Committee, from the name of its chairman, a Judge of the Court) did not confine itself to carrying out its task in an abstract way, but proposed practical solutions to settle the case of servants of the Assembly who, under the new tables, were classified in a grade or step lower than that which had been assigned to them on 12 December 1955: that solution consisted in the award of a differential allowance designed to ensure that servants thus affected would continue to receive for a certain period of time a level of remuneration corresponding to their first classification. Let me also point out that the President of the Assembly continued to maintain his reservations of principle, in particular concerning the transitional measures envisaged. In fact, the minutes of the meeting of the Committee of Presidents on 12 May 1956 state: he wishes to point out that this resolution [concerning the transitional measures proposed by the Delvaux Committee and accepted in principle by the four Presidents] must not take for granted a position which the Common Assembly cannot yet definitively accept. Indeed, such definitive acceptance is conditional upon its being possible to overcome the difficulties which are raised by the transitional measures, which is a condition which must be fulfilled if the adoption by the Assembly of its own Staff Regulations is to be avoided. Thus, the Assembly's power freely to adopt the Staff Regulations of its servants, including their classification in the scale of grades drawn up by the Committee of Presidents, was once again expressly asserted by its President, who associated himself only out of courtesy with the various attempts at harmonization which had been undertaken.

I come now to the decisions or measures which immediately preceded or accompanied the contested decisions:

I apologize for the length and exhaustiveness of this statement of the facts: 1 thought it necessary for a proper understanding of the context of the dispute, both in law and in fact.

From the procedural point of view, this action has two aspects, as the Court is aware, since the applicants through their counsel have brought before the Court one collective application for annulment and five individual applications for damages; the latter are submitted only in the alternative, in case, should the inconceivable occur, to use the expression beloved of French lawyers, the application for annulment should not be successful.

The conclusions contained in Application 7/56 seek the annulment (I quote) of the decision dated 12 July 1956, issued by the Vice-President of the Common Assembly, implemented by Communication No 56/13 dated 15 October 1956, withdrawing from the applicants, who did not accept the harmonization measures which had the effect of demoting them, the benefit of the Staff Regulations which had been granted to them and replacing them under contract until 31 December 1956, upon which date they will be dismissed.

In his statement of defence, counsel for the Common Assembly expresses his doubts as to the admissibility of the application in so far as it is directed against Decision No 56/13 of 15 October. However, he does not press the point, and relies on the wisdom of the Court in the matter.

In fact, as has been seen, the application does not attack that communication of 15 October in isolation; it seeks the annulment of the decision of 12 July issued by the Vice-President of the Assembly. On the other hand, it does not attack the decision adopted by the Bureau on 1 October 1956 which formed the subject-matter of Communication No 56/12 of 10 October.

Under Article 43 (2) of the Rules of Procedure of the Common Assembly, adopted pursuant to Article 25 of the Treaty and published in the Journal Officiel de la Communauté No 13 of 9 June 1954, the composition and organization of the Secretariat of the Assembly shall be laid down by the Bureau, which shall determine in particular the Staff Regulations and the conditions for the appointment of staff. Paragraph (3) of the same article adds: The Bureau shall determine the number of servants, the scales of their salaries, allowances and pensions and the estimates of extraordinary expenditure necessary to the functioning of the Assembly. The President of the Assembly shall be responsible for proposing the adoption of those conclusions to the Committee referred to in Article 78 (3) of the Treaty. Thus the Bureau holds the powers exercised in the name of the Assembly in the field which concerns the Court today.

The Bureau itself adopted rules of internal administration which were not published, but are annexed to the case file. In that field, they merely reiterate the provisions of the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly. However, they add (Article 3 (2)), that the Bureau shall also give its decision … in all disputes which may arise between the administration of the Assembly and its servants. Finally, the President represents the Assembly in … administrative, judicial or financial measures. He may delegate his powers by means of an order (Articles 1 and 5).

In the present case, it is clear that the decisions were adopted by the Bureau, but it is very difficult to ascertain by what measure and in what way the five applicants received notification of the decisions or merely were informed of them. It is even difficult to ascertain the date on which the decisions were adopted and whether they were adopted by the old or the new Bureau. It can apparently be accepted that they were adopted by the old Bureau, subject to confirmation by that which was to take up its duties in November 1956, and that the latter did expressly confirm them.

As to the question of the measure which gave expression to the Bureau's decision in regard to the applicants, there is room for doubt. Mr Vanrullen's letter of 12 July 1956, when taken together with that of 27 June, clearly appears as a decision, subject only to the condition of the absence of an answer from the person concerned, that is of a favourable answer: in that connexion, continued refusal appears to me to amount to the absence of a reply. That condition was fulfilled, since the refusal was in fact confirmed; let me point out, moreover, that at its meeting of 19 June 1956, the Bureau had delegated all its administrative powers to Mr Vanrullen for the purpose of carrying out the task which is mentioned under (2), that is, resolving the problem of reclassification and the measures relating thereto, on the basis of the proposals made by the Delvaux Committee and adopted by the Committee of the Four Presidents at its meeting on 15 June 1956. Was that delegation valid, and did it authorize Mr Vanrullen himself to take definitive decisions with regard to the servants concerned? It is most doubtful, but it appears difficult to me to infer therefrom that there was no decision. The most that can be accepted is that it was subject to confirmation by the Bureau, which is what took place.

Moreover, as counsel for the applicants quite rightly points out in the note which he submitted in reply to the questions asked by the Court, it was only Communication No 56/13 which enabled the applicants to realize, from the analysis of their remuneration as regards deduction for pensions, which was provided in answer to their request for details, that Mr Vanrullen's proposals had been confirmed by the Bureau, of which Communication No 56/12 made no mention whatever.

In short, there appears to be no other measure brought to the applicants' attention which could have been contested by them as manifesting the decision adopted by the Bureau.

Therefore I am of the opinion that the application is admissible.

Another preliminary question, which should be examined by the Court of its own motion if there appears to be any doubt about it, is the question whether the Court has jurisdiction to give judgment on the action. As a basis for such jurisdiction, one may hesitate between Article 42 of the Treaty, which refers to an arbitration clause (and which formed the basis of the clause conferring jurisdiction contained in the Provisional Staff Rules while the staff remained under contract), and Article 58 of the new general Staff Regulations, under which any dispute between the Community and any person to whom these Staff Regulations apply shall be referred to the Court of Justice. The two legal areas can also be combined: it is clear however that there can be no hiatus between the two systems, and that, since it has jurisdiction both in disputes arising under the contract and in those arising under the Staff Regulations, the Court must necessarily also have jurisdiction over a dispute in which an employee under contract seeks to rely upon vested rights resulting from a decision which involves an anticipatory application of the Staff Regulations in his favour.

I come now to the legality of the contested decisions. Only one submission is made in the application: that which is based on the infringement of the vested rights which each of the applicants derived from the order of 12 December 1955.

The first question concerns the scope of the various orders in relation to the point under consideration. Is it indeed an individual decision creating rights?

There can be no doubt that it is. Let me quote paragraph (3) of the order again:

The decision was not qualified by any condition, and did not contain any provision such as to render it temporary in nature. Finally, it was validly notified.

Moreover, its constituent parts appear to me to be indissociable. I do not think that it is possible, inter alia, to consider separately, on the one hand, the application of the Staff Regulations and, on the other hand, appointment to a definite grade and step. In fact, the application to a servant of the Staff Regulations is part of a whole operation, the purpose of which is to establish in the new services staff who are currently in service, taking into account the nature of the posts to be filled and the qualifications of each of the persons concerned to fill those various posts. This is what is expressed by Article 59 of the Staff Regulations where it states that servants (meaning staff who are currently in service) may be established in any grade of a category or service referred to in Article 24 of the Staff Regulations if they fulfil certain conditions. Application of the Staff Regulations is expressed by appointment, either definitively or as a probationer, to a specific grade (Article 60), exactly as for future servants (Articles 1 and 2), the only purpose of the transitional provisions being, as I have stated, to exempt staff already in service from the conditions laid down by the Staff Regulations for future recruitment and to allow their direct appointment to any grade and step of seniority. Moreover since establishment entails the servants' renouncing the benefit of their contract, they are entitled, in order to be able to exercise their option with full knowledge of the facts, to be acquainted with the grade and the step in seniority to which the administration is proposing to appoint them, and not only the decision of principle considering them eligible to become officials under the Staff Regulations: at this point a certain contractual factor steals into the picture, as a consequence of this option in favour of staff.

Since it is thus established that the decision is of an indissociable nature, and at the same time that its legal nature is that of ah individual decision creating rights, the question arises whether it could be revoked or amended.

At this point I think that reference should be made to the traditional distinction in administrative law between lawfully adopted decisions and illegal decisions.

Indeed, it is a principle that, when individual decisions comply with the law, they cannot be withdrawn: persons who are the addressees of those decisions derive from them an individual right and they are entitled to require that it should be respected. This is what distinguishes those decisions from measures in the nature of regulations or legislation which, except as otherwise provided, are automatically applicable to staff in service, the latter having no opportunity to seek to assert individual rights allegedly acquired under the preceding legislation or regulations; it is enough if those measures do not have retroactive effect, in accordance with general principles. Thus, for example, a new salary scale, even a lower one, a new age-limit, even a lower one, would be applicable to those officials who were in service on the day when the measure laying down that salary scale or that age-limit entered into force. On the other hand, an individual decision (for example, an appointment or a promotion) creates a vested right to its preservation from the day on which it is complete, provided that it has been legally adopted.

This solution, which meets the need to ensure the stability of legal relationships, and which, in the realm of unilateral public law relationships, corresponds to the effects of a contract in multilateral relationships, is common to the principles of the law of all six member countries.

The question of the withdrawal of illegal individual decisions is more difficult. In France, according to the thoroughly consistent — one might almost say classical — case-law of the Conseil d'Etat, the withdrawal of individual decisions which have created rights is possible when they are illegal, but only within the time-limit laid down for the commencement of legal proceedings or, if proceedings have been commenced, up to the time when judgment is delivered. The applicants mention this case-law, but, as there was no time-limit in the present instance (since that time-limit was laid down only by the Rules of Procedure of the Court of 21 February 1957), the applicants infer therefrom that the orders could not be revoked at all, which amounts to saying that illegal decisions should receive as much protection as lawful decisions.

That argument appears to me to be unacceptable. Let me point out that France appears to be the only member country of the Community in which the withdrawal of an illegal measure is limited to the period laid down for the commencement of legal proceedings. In Germany, the inviolability of the vested rights of officials was formally enshrined in the Weimar Constitution (Article 129) and is generally regarded as one of the traditional principles which, according to the express provisions of the fifth paragraph of Article 33 of the Basic Law, govern the elaboration of civil service law: measures of a retroactive nature, affecting grading for example, have been considered as prejudicing the vested rights of officials (Bundesgerichtshof, Großer Senat, 11 June 1952, Neue Juristenzeitung, 52/933: Article 86 of the Bundesbeamtengesetz of 14 July 1953). However, although administrative measures which have created rights cannot be revoked at will, they can be withdrawn in a certain number of cases, and in particular when the measure contravenes a mandatory legal prescription or resulted from an invalid mode of procedure (for example, failure to obtain the assent of an authority whose agreement was required), and the fact that individual rights of a public law nature result from an administrative measure (for example appointment, grading, etc.) does not prevent that measure from being withdrawn if it lacks a legal basis (Hessischer Verwaltungsgerichtshof, 2 December 1949, Deutsches Verwaltungsblatt 50/681). It will be for the Court to decide whether, when the general time-limit laid down for the application of Article 58 is applicable (it is so now), it intends to lay down case-law modelled on the French case-law which will protect the vested rights of officials. For the time being, all that I would be inclined to accept for my part is the idea of a reasonable period of time: for it would be quite contrary to natural justice to allow an administrative authority to reverse established situations, even if they are illegal, which have been producing their effects for many months, or even years. On this idea, I am in agreement with Fischbach, Kommentar zum Bundesbeamtengesetz, 1954, p. 137. However, such is obviously not the case in this instance.

Is it therefore necessary to consider the question whether the orders of 12 December 1955 were lawful or illegal, with regard to the exercise by the Assembly and the Committee of Presidents of their respective powers?

Before being sure that such examination is required, I must clarify one further problem.

For it may be asked whether the decision adopted by the Assembly to accept the harmonization proposals made by the Delvaux Committee was in the nature of a novation enabling it to go back on the decisions of 12 December 1955, which were based on a different job-classification table. A moment ago I pointed out that officials did not have a vested right to the preservation of decisions in the form of regulations, but merely the right to escape any retroactive effect of such decisions. Moreover, it is accepted that individual measures by a public authority must comply with the regulations, including those adopted by the authority itself. Thus if it is considered that, by accepting the common harmonization table, the Assembly took a decision in the form of a regulation, then must it not be accepted that the Assembly could, and even had to, consequently revise the individual classification previously carried out according to other standards? It would then become superfluous to decide the question of principle because one of two alternatives would have to apply:

The latter alternative is attractive in that it would make it possible to avoid the problem of Article 78, but I do not think that it can be adopted.

Because, if it is accepted that the Assembly had the power itself to fix the correspondence of posts to grades, the drawing up of the table of posts appears as a mere internal measure, intimately bound up with the organization of the services, and without any connexion with the Staff Regulations: from this point of view, the only measure in the nature of a regulation preceding the establishment proceedings is the table fixing the scale of grades and the corresponding salaries, drawn up by the Committee of Presidents. Since that table was drawn up by an authority external to the Assembly, namely the Committee of Presidents, the Assembly as an institution has the power freely to carry out individual classifications: once these have been made, they create rights in favour of those who are the subject of them, so long as the scale of the grades and the amount of the salaries have not been altered.

There clearly appears here the fundamental distinction between rules pertaining to the Staff Regulations and rules for the organization of the service.

The very concept of Staff Regulations implies that a validly appointed (or invested, to employ the term favoured by French theorists, to distinguish a unilateral system of staff regulations from a contractual system) official is the holder of his grade (he is sometimes even referred to as the proprietor), and he can be deprived of it only in the circumstances laid down in the Staff Regulations. In this connexion, the present Staff Regulations do seem to comply with those principles, in particular if one refers to Article 59 which speaks of establishment in any grade of a category or service referred to in the Staff Regulations. Thus if it happens that the table of the correspondence of posts to grades is changed, such alteration can be applied to staff in service only in the future, that is on the occasion of a subsequent promotion, unless it is to be retroactive; it can be applied upon those conditions, because the Community Staff Regulations are not based on the distinction between grade and post, as for example in France and England, but on the contrary establish a legal connexion between the grade and the post; but alteration of the correspondence table cannot make possible demotion with immediate effect or, even less so, with retroactive effect. Any other interpretation would lead to the denial of the very idea of Staff Regulations.

In these circumstances, the true alternative seems to me to be the following:

Consequently, the Court is under an obligation, in my opinion, to decide upon the interpretation of Article 78 of the Treaty.

It would be excessive to inflict a reading of Article 78 upon the Court, since the Court already knows it by heart and since, although certain difficulties attend its application, that article is not as obscure as has been suggested: as in naval warfare, obscurity is sometimes artificial …

However, it is clear that that provision must be viewed in the general institutional context of the Treaty.

The Treaty is based upon delegation, with the consent of the Member States, of sovereignty to supranational institutions for a strictly defined purpose, namely the operation of a common market in coal and steel. The legal principle underlying the Treaty is a principle of limited authority. The Community is a legal person governed by public law, and as such it shall enjoy the legal capacity it requires to perform its functions and attain its objectives (Article 6), but only that capacity: this is the application of the principle of speciality, which is well known in public law. The way in which the functions are to be performed and the determination of the objectives to be attained are precisely fixed by the Treaty.

Moreover (same article), the Community shall be represented by its institutions, each within the limits of its powers. Those powers are themselves carefully defined by all the provisions of the Treaty which confer powers, and the principle of limited authority (which is precisely called conferred authority) is expressly stated for each institution: it is Article 8 for the High Authority, whose duty it is to ensure that the objectives set out in this Treaty are attained in accordance with the provisions thereof. It is Article 20 for the Assembly, which shall exercise the supervisory powers which are conferred upon it by this Treaty. It is Article 26 for the Council, which shall exercise its powers in the cases provided for and in the manner set out in this Treaty. Finally, it is Article 31 for the Court, which shall ensure that in the interpretation and application of this Treaty, and of rules laid down for the implementation thereof, the law is observed.

That is an absolutely essential aspect of the Treaty. The Member States agreed to give up part of their sovereignty only in favour of institutions functioning under clearly defined conditions, which must be sufficient in themselves.

Therefore, none of the institutions can excercise powers other than those conferred upon it by the Treaty, either in relation to the other institutions or in regard to third parties, whether they be States or private persons. On the other hand, each institution, within the limits of its powers, is fully autonomous and cannot be subject to the authority of any other: it exercises its powers spontaneously and directly under the conditions laid down by the Treaty, with the Court appearing in this connexion as the body responsible for regulating the respective spheres of authority by virtue of Articles 33 and 38.

However, such autonomy clearly could not be absolute as regards financial matters, since no institution, even a supranational one, can escape the necessity of submitting to a certain amount of supervision in that area. Hence, Article 78 institutes financial supervision, which is entrusted to the auditor and which partakes of the nature both of an audit of expenditure undertaken and of a checking of accounts, and budgetary supervision which relates to the establishment of the budget of expenditure (since there is no budget of revenue, and consequently no budgetary balance to be achieved). For this reason Article 78 is based on a twofold concern for reconciliation:

To consider only the preliminary budgetary supervision, which relates to the establishment of the budget of expenditure, that reconciliation is ensured in two ways:

Bearing in mind these few ideas, which appear to me to emerge fairly clearly both from Article 78 and from the institutional provisions of the Treaty and in particular Article 6 thereof, it seems that the solution to the difficulties reflected in this dispute is relatively easy.

With their help, two arguments can be put aside, one of them resulting in a legal misconception and the other in a factual misconception of the powers of the Committee of Presidents.

On all those grounds, I am of the opinion:

Here again, there are questions of admissibility and problems going to the substance of the case.

As regards admissibility, the Assembly has raised an objection of inadmissibility based on the fact that the applications for damages are submitted in the alternative to the single application for annulment and are inconsistent with it, since they presuppose that it will be dismissed. It is objected that that procedure is not correct.

I do not see why that should be so. It frequently happens that litigants commence several sets of proceedings, either before the same court, or before different courts, and there is nothing to prevent this in the case of autonomous procedures on separate legal grounds and when the actions also have a separate legal subject-matter. It is quite usual for civil servants, for example, to claim annulment of administrative decisions which concern them and, on the other hand, compensation for the damage which they consider that the administration has caused them. In such a case, it can happen that, by virtue of its retroactive effects and of the obligations with regard to restitutio in integrum which it may entail, annulment deprives the conclusions in the action for damages of their subject-matter; but this is in the nature of any pleading in the alternative. The fact that in the present case the conclusions in the alternative formed the subject-matter of separate applications may be explained by the difference between the legal nature of an action for damages and that of an application for annulment.

On the substance of the case, after the long explanations which I felt obliged to go into regarding the application for annulment and after the excellent oral arguments which the Court heard yesterday morning, my own comments will be short.

As in any action for damages, three questions have to be answered: (1) Is there any liability entailing reparation? (2) If the answer is in the affirmative, is there any damage? (3) If so, what is the amount of it?

However, although the legal basis of the applications was not specified, the legal grounds on which they rest seem fairly clear, especially following the oral arguments.

In my view, there are two legal grounds: that of wrongful breach of contract, and that of wrongful act or omission. In fact, counsel for the applicants spoke of a breach of the links between the administration and its servants having the nature of a wrongful act or omission, and he also spoke of the fraudulent conduct, of the excessive haste, of the recklessness and of the capriciousness with which the administration acted towards the applicants: all of those are indeed factors which constitute a wrongful act or omission on the part of the Community such as to make it liable under Article 40, which is the ordinary law of quasi-delictual liability in the Treaty.

I unequivocally refuse to accept as constituting a wrongful act or omission such of the conduct of the Assembly as concerns the decision of July-October 1956, at least in so far as that decision is considered as being lawful. A moment ago I maintained that it was lawful, first, because it could lawfully reverse the orders of December 1955 and, secondly, because it had itself been adopted in accordance with the classification drawn up by the Committee of Presidents, at least as far as the posts occupied by the applicants were concerned. An administration can — sometimes — incurliability by virtue of adopting a lawful decision, but it certainly cannot do so on the ground of a wrongful act or omission.

On the other hand, the question arises to its fullest extent in relation to the orders of December 1955, which in my submission the Court should find to be illegal.

I think, and I frankly say, that there is such a wrongful act or omission; I do not describe it as serious, or gross, or unjustifiable, all of which expressions have a significance in legal language which in no way corresponds to the facts of the case. There were neither fraudulent manoeuvres, nor any intention to cause harm — quite the contrary! On the other hand, the error of law which underlies the decision is, as has been seen, most excusable, and the Assembly has never varied its argument in law. The true wrongful act or omission does not lie there. In reality, it lies in a general mode of behaviour which counsel for the applicants has described, this time in terms of which I fully approve, as excessive haste, recklessness, and capriciousness. Doubtless those responsible for that excessive haste were to a large extent the Assembly, as a deliberative body, which had for a long time been continually pressing for the implementation of the Staff Regulations, and also the staff themselves, whose conduct certainly had the same purpose.

However, this does not lessen the liability of the institution as such. In truth, two courses of action were possible: either, placing its reliance upon what it thought was its right, and judging the moment opportune, the Assembly on its own could have adopted the decisions concerning its servants without waiting any longer and, to be consistent with itself, could have implemented its own Staff Regulations; or (which was obviously the reasonable course), while persisting in its reservations regarding its autonomous powers concerning the classification of posts (in accordance with its argument in law), it could have voluntarily accepted to take part in efforts to reach harmonization with the other institutions, under the aegis of the Committee of Presidents. I say that that was the reasonable course, because it is the only one which complied with the very idea of the Community, if that idea is to embody a living reality and not only the abstract legal concept contained in Article 6 of the Treaty; subsequently, the President of the Assembly came to understand this very well. But then, quite clearly, individual implementation should not have been proceeded with before the completion or an attempt at the completion of the harmonization work: to take any other course of action was to end in deadlock.

Therefore I am of the opinion that the Assembly was guilty of a wrongful act or omission which renders it liable under Article 40 of the Treaty.