The European Ombudsman - Annual Report for 1997

• Published date: 07 December 1998
• Official Gazette Publication: Gazzetta ufficiale delle Comunità europee, C 380, 07 dicembre 1998,Diario Oficial de las Comunidades Europeas, C 380, 07 de diciembre de 1998,Journal officiel des Communautés européennes, C 380, 07 décembre 1998

|

The European Ombudsman - Annual Report for 1997

Official Journal C 380 , 07/12/1998 P. 0001 - 0162

ANNUAL REPORT FOR 1997 (98/C 380/01)

Strasbourg, 20 April 1998

MR JOSÉ MARÍA GIL-ROBLES GIL-DELGADO

President

European Parliament

rue Wiertz

B-1047 Bruxelles

Mr President,

In accordance with Article 138e(1) of the Treaty establishing the European Community and Article 3(8) of the Decision of the European Parliament on the Regulations and General Conditions Governing the Performance of the Ombudsman's Duties, I hereby present my report for the year 1997.

JACOB SÖDERMAN

Ombudsman of the European Union

>TABLE>

1. FOREWORD BY THE EUROPEAN OMBUDSMAN

This is the third Annual Report by the European Ombudsman, but only the second to cover a full year of activity. Even though the Office is still at a relatively early stage of its development, we have already in 1997 managed to begin more own-initiative inquiries, close more cases with reasoned decisions and achieve more positive results for complainants. Three friendly solutions have been successfully proposed and the first Special Report was presented to the European Parliament.

During the year it was also possible to inaugurate the main office in Strasbourg with a small celebration and to open an antenna in Brussels. The implementing provisions were adopted by the Ombudsman in accordance with Article 14 of the Statute of the Ombudsman and a network of liaison officers was set up with the national ombudsmen offices and similar bodies in the Member States.

INFORMING CITIZENS OF THE RIGHT TO COMPLAIN

Since beginning work as European Ombudsman on 1 September 1995, I have dedicated a considerable part of my time to informing European citizens of their right to complain to the Ombudsman, about the situations in which it is appropriate to make a complaint and about how this should be done. To promote the citizens' knowledge, I have engaged in regular contact and cooperation with the offices of the national ombudsmen and similar bodies, with the European Parliament information offices and with the European Commission representations in the Member States. All these bodies have our information material available, including the optional standard form on which a complaint may be made. They have shown a positive attitude towards cooperation all the time.

To provide information to citizens more quickly and effectively, we have also opened a website on the Internet, linked to that of the European Parliament, where we give general information about the right to complain and about our activities. We have also released information to the European press about decisions or initiatives of general interest and presented the Ombudsman's work in a number of trade journals.

I have also visited the Member States in order to make the work of the Ombudsman better known. There is only one Member State, Portugal, which I have yet to visit. My visit there is due to take place in April 1998 and is being arranged in cooperation with the European Parliament information office in Lisbon and the office of the Portuguese national Ombudsman.

The statistics showing the number of complaints in relation to population for each Member State give a rough picture of how the information campaign has been received (see Appendix A). There are some significant differences. Leaving aside Belgium, Luxembourg and Finland, each of which has its own explanation, it seems that of the smaller countries Ireland is well informed whereas fewer complaints have been received from Austria and Sweden. As regards the big countries, the information campaign has been successful in Spain and France and less successful in Germany and Italy.

On the general level, 1 181 new complaints were made to the European Ombudsman during 1997. That represents an increase of 40 % on the total of 842 new complaints received in 1996. There has also been an increase in the number of admissible complaints, although it has been clearly slower.

There is still a lot to be done in the field of information. I expect that the European Parliament and the Committee on Petitions have the same problems in promoting knowledge of the right to petition. The difference is that, with my rather limited mandate, confined to the activities of the Community institutions and bodies, I must focus on reaching the people who might have a real reason to complain about the European administration rather than launch general campaigns. During the year 1998, the Ombudsman's information campaign will target citizens and bodies who deal with the European Community administration. More effort will be put into using the possibilities to use the Internet both to communicate directly with citizens and to furnish European information offices and organisations with knowledge of the right to complain to the Ombudsman. It seems to be important also to focus more on the regional level in those Member States which have a more decentralised structure. This information activity could also distribute information on the citizens' right to petition the European Parliament.

INITIATIVES ON TRANSPARENCY

Article 138e of the Treaty gives the Ombudsman the possibility to carry out inquiries on his own initiative as well as in response to complaints. Within the limits of my mandate, I have used the own-initiative power so as to promote transparency in the Union by beginning three inquiries into subjects where a number of complaints suggested more general dissatisfaction on the part of citizens.

The own-initiative inquiry into the procedures used by the European Commission in dealing with complaints from citizens about infringements of Community law by Member States was initiated and closed during 1997 and is presented in this report (See chapter 3). The own-initiative inquiry was welcomed by the Parliament in its Resolution concerning the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Commission on the monitoring of the application of Community law (rapporteur Astrid Thors).

Another own-initiative inquiry which is intended to promote greater transparency concerns the procedures used by the Community institutions for recruitment of staff. This inquiry was launched in November 1997 and is still continuing.

Finally, there is the own-initiative inquiry into public access to documents, which I launched in June 1996. On 20 December 1996, I made draft recommendations to 14 Community institutions and bodies that they should adopt, and make easily available to the public, rules concerning public access to documents. The draft recommendations and the reasons for them were fully explained in the Annual Report for 1996.

The responses of the institutions and bodies concerned to the draft recommendations are the subject of a Special Report by the Ombudsman to the European Parliament, which I presented to the President of the European Parliament, Mr Gil-Robles, on 15 December 1997. Since this is the first ever Special Report under the Statute of the European Ombudsman, I proposed that it could be dealt with through a procedure similar to that used for the Annual Report.

To guarantee a consistent and effective response to the Ombudsman's work, it would be of utmost importance that the Committee of the European Parliament responsible for relations with the Ombudsman also deals with all the reports that the Ombudsman presents to the Parliament in accordance with the Statute. If special expertise is needed in relation to a particular report, this could of course be obtained in an appropriate way, such as an opinion from another Committee. To avoid confusion, it could be helpful for the Parliament to consider a clarification of its Rules of Procedure to specify how the Ombudsman's Annual and Special Reports are dealt with.

RESULTS OF THE WORK

In each year of operation of the Ombudsman's office so far there have been more positive results for the citizens. This year the number of cases settled by the institutions has increased and the first friendly solutions have been reached. Still more must be achieved in this respect during the coming year before the results can be considered satisfactory. The antenna in Brussels will make it easier to carry out the time-consuming activities of inspecting documents and negotiating friendly solutions. The adoption and publication of a code of conduct on good administrative behaviour would surely raise the quality of the institutions' administrative practices and enhance their relations with the European citizens.

Although the Office managed to decide rapidly on the admissibility of new complaints and when necessary advise the complainants of another competent body to which the complaint could be addressed and although it also managed to deal with far more admissible cases and open more own-initiative investigations, a small backlog in dealing with some admissible complaints has developed.

The objective should be to carry out the necessary inquiries into a complaint and inform the citizen of the outcome within one year, unless there are special circumstances which require a longer investigation. At the end of 1997, there were about 30 cases where this goal had not been achieved, partly because the initial phase involved more administrative work than expected, but also because there is an objective need for more staffing. The need for more staff is also underlined by the new responsibilities that the Treaty of Amsterdam will mean for the European Ombudsman. I hope that this will be adequately dealt in the budget procedure for the years 1999 and 2000.

In its resolution dealing with the Ombudsman's Annual Report for 1996, the European Parliament expressed the need to define the term 'maladministration`. I undertook that obligation and a definition which takes into account the experience of the national ombudsmen and similar bodies in the Member States is included in chapter 2 of this Annual...