On September 24, 2015, the General Court (Court) of the European Union annulled (judgment not available in English) three open competition notices which required the applicants to choose between English, French, or German as their second language and the language of communications with the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO). According to the press release, the notices justified the language criteria by pointing to the interests of the service in finding candidates who were immediately operational in their jobs to maintain the efficient functioning of the service. Spain and Italy challenged the language requirements, arguing they were discriminatory, violated the principle of proportionality and the language regime set out by EU Regulation. The Court decided that the language restrictions violated the Regulation because they restricted communications with EPSO to the three languages and emphasized that candidates had the right to communicate with the EPSO in any of the twenty-three official languages of the EU. The Court also rejected the argument that candidates need to have mastered one of the three languages as a second language to carry out their work. The Court went on to stress that “[i]t cannot be presumed that a newly recruited official who does not master one of the working languages or languages of deliberation in an Institution is incapable of immediately carrying out useful work in the institution concerned.” Finally, the Court rejected the statistics produced by the Commission regarding the use of languages in the European Institutions, stating that they did not suffice to disprove the existence of discrimination. It concluded that “[i]n its view the obligation for candidates to choose English, French or German as a second language is not objectively justified or proportionate to the objective pursued by the Commission, namely to recruit officials and agents who are immediately operational.”