Italian Republic v, European Commission, Case C-566/10, CJEU (Grand Chamber), 27 November 2012

Diversity of treatment due to language in the competition notices for the recruitment of officials and assistants at the European institutions. Discrimination based on language. 

Regulation n. 31 (C.E.E.) 11 (C.E.E.A.) relating to the statute of officials and the regime applicable to other agents of the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community. 

1. Community legislation establishes the language regime of the European Union, which provides that the Official Journal must be published in all official languages. Furthermore, competition notices, with any subsequent amendments, must be published in all (official) languages ​​in order to avoid any discrimination based on language. Therefore, a candidate whose mother tongue is not one of the languages ​​in which the competition notices were published is at a disadvantage both in terms of the correct understanding of these notices and in terms of the deadline for preparing and sending the application. This disadvantage is the consequence of a difference in treatment on grounds of language, prohibited by Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. 

2. A limitation of the choice of a language as a second language to participate in general competitions of the Union may be justified by the interest of the service. However, this interest in the service must be objectively justified. Furthermore, any rules limiting the choice of the second language must establish objective criteria so that candidates can know, sufficiently in advance, which language requirements must be met, and this in order to be able to prepare for the competitions in the best conditions. In fact, the recruitment of officials must ensure the collaboration of officials with the highest skills in the institution. As this objective can be better safeguarded when candidates are authorized to present the selection tests in their mother tongue or in the second language of which they consider themselves to be most expert, it is the responsibility of the institutions to balance the legitimate objective justifying the limitation of the number of languages ​​of the competitions and the objective of identifying candidates with the highest qualities.