NATO amends rules governing the internal review and appeal procedure

By Frédéric Dopagne, Saskia Lemeire and Bert Theeuwes

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has amended the rules governing the administrative review, mediation, complaint and appeal procedures contained in its Civilian Personnel Regulations. The procedural changes are significant, introducing new deadlines, amending existing deadlines and modifying the calculation of time limits to a certain extent. The changes intend to simplify the pre-litigation process and to increase the effectiveness of the complaints and appeals framework. However, certain amendments seem to create a contradiction and are thus not entirely clear. Practice will point out whether the amendments indeed lead to increased efficiency in the procedure.

The amended rules apply to all proceedings initiated on or after 1 March 2019. Proceedings initiated before 1 March 2019 continue to be governed by the previous version of the Civilian Personnel Regulations. We recommend anyone involved in an internal review or appeal proceeding within NATO to carefully review which rules are applicable.

The amended version of the NATO Civilian Personnel Regulations can be found here.

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