Legal Facts Establishing the Public Service Legal Relationship – Appointment Versus Contract

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to examine a narrower issue within the wider topic of the establishment of the public service legal relationship, namely the relevance and the possible latitude of the so-called contractual principle in this regard. Firstly, the paper summarizes the professional discourse concerning the legal classification of the public law institution of the appointment, pointing out the undeniable significance of the implied contractual principle. Secondly, in light of the contractual principle, the study analyses the possible room for labour law-inclined (civil law-based) open norms (general behavioural clauses) – as contractual employee-protection mechanisms – in civil service law (in this respect, the so-called “equitable assessment” principle from the Labour Code is scrutinized as a case study). Thirdly, the paper analyses, to what extent and how the public service (and the public sector in more general terms) is open towards various “contractual” (i.e. nonappointment-based) forms of employment.