Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-16-Speech-4-026"
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"en.20061116.2.4-026"2
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"Mr President, I should like to thank very warmly all the Members of this august House for their very encouraging words. I take heart from the support I have from this particular body, whose cooperation I value enormously. I also commit myself and my staff to trying to move forward, to doing more of the same and to doing more of what I am asked to do.
I appreciate the encouragement concerning a Single Code and I am working with Commissioner Wallström to see whether that would be possible; she referred to that in her own remarks.
I wish to thank Sir Robert Atkins in particular for his determination to see that all the special reports submitted to this House by the Ombudsman will be dealt with eventually. I hope that will be done.
The one-stop shop idea is a very important one. I would very much look forward to working with Mrs Wallström and with other institutions and perhaps launching a brainstorming and reflection procedure about that idea, so that we can serve citizens better. I want to stress that the European Ombudsman and the Committee on Petitions are complementary organisations; I am very grateful to that committee and we will work with it constantly with a view to moving forward.
Lastly, I have a few comments to make if I may. The inadmissibles are indeed very important and we shall try to reduce them. But we will continue to help all citizens who come to us for the wrong reason by using the Network of Ombudsmen of the European Union as a mechanism of transferring complaints to them, thereby helping those citizens and in a sense trying to apply subsidiarity in non-judicial mechanisms. We work with our colleagues at national and regional level to serve citizens better, which includes the transfer of inadmissibles.
I thank Mrs McGuinness very much for her very laudatory remarks. I view myself as an external mechanism of control over the administration and therefore, if everything else fails, yes, I will also have to act as a Rottweiler. Leaving aside the Irish overtones of that – I do not want to get into theological implications here, or divinity – I think that is, however, the ultimate step. The first step, on which I am working very closely with the Commission, with the Secretary-General of the Commission and with Mrs Wallström, is to reach out to the institutions, to reach out to the Commission, and help them understand what their obligations are. It is indeed to help them realise that a change of culture is extraordinarily important if the European institutions, including the Commission, are in fact to understand that the institutions exist to serve the citizen and not the other way round.
Thank you very much for giving me the time to make these clarifications. Once again, I want to thank this House for its very encouraging and very warm reactions to my report.
It is not possible for me to cover all the remarks that have been made, but let me address some of the issues.
Firstly, I am very grateful for the support I have received concerning the Statute. With the permission of Mrs Panayotopoulos-Cassiotou, I would like to clarify two points concerning this, which I will do in Greek, since she addressed me in Greek.
Mr President, Mrs Panayotopoulos, I wish to assure you that the European Personnel Selection Office is already within the European Ombudsman's mandate and that this is a matter of particular concern to us, which we are monitoring very, very closely.
As far as my recommendations are concerned, I also wish to assure you that the request I make ...
I apologise, Mr President. I did not realise there was a problem with the interpretation. I thought it was an attempt to test my ability to speak in my native tongue!
With the President’s permission I would like very briefly to assure Mrs Panayotopoulos-Cassiotou and the House that the European Personnel Selection Office is already within the Ombudsman’s mandate and we devote a great deal of time to questions concerning recruitment.
On the Statute, I want to make it absolutely plain that the Ombudsman is not, under any circumstances, asking for the right to initiate cases before the Court. That is clearly not for us to do. The Court and the Ombudsman are separate. What we are asking for is the right to intervene before the Court, as that right has been given to the European Data Protection Supervisor in cases of major violations of fundamental rights. That is a fundamental difference. I repeat, we are under no circumstances seeking to have access to the Court in a way that would in fact go beyond my mandate."@en1
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"(The speaker was cut off by the President, who drew his attention to a problem with the interpretation)"1
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