Case Summary
This case involves the use of an automated system for the management of high-school teachers. The system was used to determine the school where the teachers would have been assigned. The claimants, however, complained that the entire recruitment procedure had been managed by a computer system by means of an algorithm (the operation of which allegedly remained unknown) and had resulted in measures without any reasons, without the identification of an official of the administration who had evaluated the individual situations and correctly externalized the relevant determinations. According to the claimants, this algorithm would have ordered transfers to one province rather than another, to a support post rather than a common post, without taking into account the preferences indicated in the respective transfer applications, without any reasons and in the absence of the slightest transparency.
The Court upholds the appeal and holds that the same principle of good administration, impartiality and transparency that informa public administration must be applied to automated systems. Interestingly, the Court affirms that “the technical rule governing each algorithm still remains a general administrative rule, constructed by man and not by machine, to be then (only) applied by the latter, even if this is done exclusively” and therefore, the algorithm is an “administrative act”.
Access to the full judgment
Further notes on contested technology
- → AI Technology
- → Solely Automated-Decision
- → The technology is deployed
Additional Resources
Sümeyye Elif Biber ‘Between Humans and Machines: Judicial Interpretation of the Automated Decision-Making Practices in the EU’ in Governance of Automated Decision-Making and EU Law, Herwig C. H. Hofmann & Felix Pflücke (eds) (Oxford University Press 2024)
Author of the case note
