14/10/2005 (Agence Europe) - The European Ombudsman, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, has welcomed the response of the European Parliament to his inquiry concerning its information campaign in Finland for the European elections held in June 2004. This follows a complaint concerning the Parliament's failure to publish election posters in Swedish as well as in Finnish in the run-up to the elections. In response to the Ombudsman's inquiry, Parliament agreed that it would have been appropriate to publish the posters also in Swedish, acknowledging that the proportion of the Finnish population which speaks Swedish is not relevant to the status of that language as an official language of the EU or to its status under the Finnish Constitution. It promised that its information office in Helsinki would ensure that greater care was taken in the use of languages in future information campaigns.