a)

In the event that the above legislation is held to be inconsistent with the principles of Community law as regards the fixed-term employees concerned, is it possible to identify objective reasons for derogating from the principle that those employees should be treated no differently from permanent employees, for considerations relating to social policy purposes, construed in these circumstances as the need to prevent the insertion of ‘stabilised’ employees in parallel with those already placed on the permanent staff in accordance with the general rule requiring a competitive examination for access to posts with the public administrative authorities (the rule imposed by the third paragraph of Article 97 of the Constitution and subject only to derogation by statute, such as the legislation at issue, under which the sole requirement is success in a simple selection procedure) and is it possible — in the light of the Court’s observations in [paragraph] 47 of its order of 7 March 2013 [in Case C-393/11 AEEG v Bertazzi and Others [2013] ECR] — for [the needs underlying] those objective reasons to be regarded as satisfied, in terms of proportionality, merely by giving workers in precarious employment whose position has been ‘stabilised’ personal salary compensation which can be absorbed by future pay rises and is not open to reassessment, with an interruption of the normal advancement in salary level and of access to higher grades?

b)

On the other hand, if, once suitability for particular duties has been determined, periodic appraisals were undertaken to verify that the duties are being performed correctly, with a view to permitting the employees concerned to progress to higher grades and salary levels with the possibility of moving to a different category on the strength of a competitive examination held later, would that be sufficient to redress the balance between the position of ‘stabilised’ employees and the position of staff members recruited on the basis of a public competitive examination, without it being necessary for length of service to be set at nought and salaries to be set at the starting level in the case of the former group (in the absence, moreover, of any appreciable advantage in favour of the second group under the AEEG rules governing career advancement, as described above), with the result that, in the case under consideration, there would be no objective reasons, of the requisite objectivity and transparency, for derogating from Directive 1999/70/EC that could be applied to the employment conditions in question in the particular context of relevance here?