Strasbourg, 08/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - In Strasbourg on Monday the European Ombudsman Jacob Söderman presented his Annual Report for 2001. Like every year, he took advantage of the opportunity to outline the main problems of bad administration that citizens are confronted with in their relations with European Union institutions and bodies.
Mr Söderman didn't appear convinced by the regulation on public access to documents adopted last year by Parliament and Council. He stressed in his report the extent to which the implementation of the regulation and the good will of the institutions will be important in terms of promoting greater transparency. He said that the years to come would demonstrate this and people should be optimistic. But he felt that a close eye should be kept on the impact of data protection rules aiming to protect citizens' private and family lives. If the institutions apply them to other ends they could undermine the transparency of administration in the European Union while diluting necessary protection of the fundamental right to private and family life. The Ombudsman said he didn't understand why the European Commission had refused so far to take Parliament's request into consideration, to adopt a code of conduct for EU administration. Mr Söderman noted that this type of law existed in virtually all Member States and said he would rely on the code he had proposed that had been endorsed by Parliament when examining complaints sent to him, as Parliament had asked him to do. In terms of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, Mr Söderman said that the three institutions that proclaimed the Charter had not net demonstrated any real desire to apply it in practice, citing the example of age discrimination that still exists in recruiting staff for the institutions.
The Ombudsman was indignant at the criticisms some people have levelled against him in terms of lack of visibility, saying that he did not know of any Ombudsman's office anywhere in the world that did more to inform citizens of their right to make complaints and no other office had to cover fifteen Member States and twelve languages. Hs said that his office had already started providing information to the candidate countries. He said that any advice that would enable the job to be done better was welcome but that he would not follow up requests that only aimed to act in a populist crowd-pleasing manner since they would damage the Ombudsman's image in terms of a serious, professional stakeholder within the European Union.
On his powers of investigation and his access to documents, Mr Söderman said that the European Parliament had adopted a draft amendment to his Statute giving him general access to the institutions' documents and forcing all officials to respond to his requests. This amendment can only be formalised by Parliament once it has been approved by qualified majority voting by the Council. The Commission has adopted an Opinion (it is only being consulted in this procedure) in which it agrees to the planned change but stresses that some documents are confidential and data protection and document access rules have to be respected. The Commission does not directly attack the obligation on officials to respond and give reliable and full information, but a level of disquiet shines through in the Opinion. The report notes that Mr Söderman had to intervene when he discovered that the Commission services were attempting to intimidate staff in the Ombudsman's office when providing documents by wanting them to sign a discharge from liability document whereby the Commission was not responsible in the event of a complaint from a third party concerning the dissemination of information contained in the document. Mr Söderman has instructed his staff not to sign such documents.
Mr Söderman notes that the average time it took to decide whether complaints could be investigated had not changed in 2001, taking 33 days as opposed to 50 in 1998, but the average length of an investigation was 289 days in 2001 as against 116 in 2000. In 2001 the Ombudsman dealt with 2179 cases, 1874 of which were complaints he had received that year. 1694 of the complaints came from citizens, 83 from associations, 86 from companies and 4 from MEPs. The Ombudsman also launched 4 investigations on his own initiative. Only 29% of the complaints received came within the Ombudsman's powers of investigation (no less than 1227 complaints did not concern institutions or Community bodies). Of the 313 appropriate complaints, 204 investigations were opened (no investigation could be opened into the other dossiers). 77% of the complaints concerned the Commission, understandable given its important role. The main types of bad administration complained about were lack of transparency (86 cases); discrimination (19 cases); procedures failing to respect defendants' rights (32 cases); abuse of power (30 cases); unjustified delays (37 cases); negligence (32 cases), failure to fulfil its role (Commission's role as Guardian of the Treaties vis-à-vis Member States) (3 cases); and judicial error (19 cases). The Ombudsman closed 253 investigations in 2001. In 114 cases he did not find any evidence of bad administration.
He sent 46 critical comments to the institutions. 80 cases were settled by the institutions. In 10 cases, an institution accepted the Ombudsman's recommendation and in one case the matter was settled following a special report (Following the investigation of a complaint, the Ombudsman first sends a critical comment to the institution or body concerned. If the case is not settled at this stage, he sends a recommendation, and if the recommendation is not accepted, he drafts a special report to the EP.) The geographical origin of the complaints is as follows (the population of the Member State concerned as a percentage of the population of the EU as a whole is given in brackets): Germany (21.9) 17%; UK (15.7%) 6%; France (15.6%) 12%; Italy (15.4%) 10%; Spain (10.6%) 14%; Netherlands (4.1%) 4%; Greece (2.8%) 3%; Belgium (2.7%) 8%; Portugal (2.6%) 4%; Sweden (2.4%) 3%; Austria (2.1%) 2%) Denmark (1.4%) 1%; Finland (1.3%) 5%; Ireland (0.9%) 2%; and Luxembourg (0.1%) 2%.