Judgment No. 2347
Decision
1. The impugned decision is set aside.
2. The Organization is ordered to change the August 1997 October 1999 performance report, signed by the complainant's supervisor on 11 November 1999, to record a "C" rating for supervisory work; any consequential changes to the complainant's employment status shall be made retroactive to that date.
3. It shall pay the complainant: 25,000 euros in damages; 5,000 United States dollars in costs for the internal appeals, plus her travel expenses between Trieste and Paris and corresponding per diem; and a further 5,000 euros in costs for the present proceedings.
4. All other claims are dismissed.
Considerations 11-12
Extract:
It is trite law that any decision negatively affecting a staff member must be reasoned. The Tribunal has consistently held that the breach of the duty to substantiate such decisions is in itself sufficient to warrant the Tribunal’s intervention. In Judgment 2261, a recent example following a long line of precedent, the Tribunal stated the following:
“In one respect, however, the complainant’s allegation of error of law is fully justified. The Tribunal’s case law holds that any decision negatively affecting an employee must be reasoned [...]. It is not for the Tribunal […] to find justification for the unmotivated decision of the Director General. Those findings cannot be sustained.”
Likewise, in Judgment 2278 the Tribunal said:
“9. In the first place, the Tribunal has repeatedly stressed the necessity for administrative decisions to be properly supported by reasons. That is especially the case where, after an elaborate internal appeal procedure in which each side has filed extensive and detailed pleadings, the executive head of an international organisation, acting in a quasi judicial capacity and as the penultimate arbiter of disputes between the administration and the staff, decides not to accept the recommendation of the internal appellate body. In Judgment 2092, under 10, the Tribunal said:
‘When the executive head of an organisation accepts and adopts the recommendations of an internal appeal body he is under no obligation to give any further reasons than those given by the appeal body itself. Where, however, [...] he rejects those recommendations his duty to give reasons is not fulfilled by simply saying that he does not agree with the appeal body.’
10. As the titular head of the very administration whose conduct is being called into question, the President of the Office must be scrupulous in the performance of his function as final decision maker in internal appeals. It is his duty not only to be fair and objective; his conduct must also make it manifest that he has been so. It is not enough to state, as the President appears to do in the impugned decision, that he thinks the administration has put forward the better case. That is not a reason but a conclusion. The internal appellate process is designed and intended to provide fair, satisfactory and rapid resolution of staff grievances in international organisations. To treat it in the cavalier manner displayed in the present case tends to throw the whole process into disrepute. That is not in the best interests of anybody, least of all the Organisation itself. For its failure to respect an essential formality, the decision must be quashed.”
In the same vein see Judgments 1235 and 1355.
Reference(s)
ILOAT Judgment(s): 1235, 1355, 2261, 2278
Keywords
decision; motivation
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