Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-10-27-Speech-4-010-000"
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"en.20111027.5.4-010-000"2
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"Mr President, the European Ombudsman Service was created by the Treaty of Maastricht as one of the features of European Union citizenship. Article 24 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union provides for the right to submit a complaint to the European Ombudsman.
Finally, I would like to express once again my support. I am confident that I will not be the only one in this Chamber to support the information campaign which Mr Diamandouros is intending to launch in connection with promoting the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, as I hope that it will be an integral part of a future legislation.
On 27 September 2010 it was 15 years since the European Ombudsman was created as an institution. The occasion was marked by a presentation of the strategy for its development until 2014. The protection afforded to European citizens has changed in the last 15 years, thanks to the Ombudsman’s independence and the democratic control exercised by the European Parliament over the transparency of his work. The experience acquired during these 15 years enables the Ombudsman to see the basic problems in maladministration and structural weaknesses in the relations between institutions, as well as between institutions and citizens.
In carrying out his job up to 2010, Mr Diamandouros demonstrated a commitment to raising European Union citizens’ awareness of their rights and of how they can be protected. This mainly concerns the right to good administration, the right to access European Union documents, which is sometimes refused even to us MEPs, the right to engage in dialogue with the European Union’s institutions, and the right to contact the Ombudsman.
The creation of the Ombudsman’s interactive portal and website provides irrefutable proof of this, enabling citizens to find out to whom and about what they can submit complaints. This service has been used by 19 000 people in the past year. Thanks to this portal, the number of complaints submitted to the Ombudsman in 2010 fell by 400, compared with the previous year.
However, in spite of this, even this year most of the complaints submitted have been to do with the transparency of and access to information. More than 30% of the complaints are about this.
In the tough economic climate Europe is currently experiencing, Euroscepticism is growing in most Member States. In a period of crisis, more and more countries are trying to find ways and citizens want to express their views as citizens and voice their discontent when their rights are violated. They send their complaints to Parliament’s Committee on Petitions, which sometimes delays these complaints and petitions by three or four years, making them ineffective.
I think that Mr Diamandouros is improving, through his work, the quality of transparency and Europeans’ awareness, but as he himself always says: ‘I am just one person and there are more than 700 of you.’ This is why everyone’s efforts are required to support this cause. In this respect, I would like to mention and thank the Ombudsman for his good cooperation with Parliament’s Committee on Petitions.
The European Ombudsman also works in close cooperation with his colleagues in the Member States within the so-called European Network of Ombudsmen. In 2010, in 977 cases, the complaints were sent to members of the European Network of Ombudsmen. In 2010 the Ombudsman continued to exercise his powers in an active, impartial manner, which is highlighted by the number of inquiries carried out on the basis of complaints submitted during the last year – 323 – with the majority of the inquiries concerning the European Commission. This is why we urge the Commissioner in charge of interinstitutional relations to take measures to remedy this.
Another example of the Ombudsman’s effectiveness is that he made the European Medicines Agency provide better access to its archives and documents. The Lisbon Treaty’s entry into force in 2009 means that the European Ombudsman’s powers also include the possibility of investigating maladministration within the common foreign policy and security policy, as well as the possibility of submitting special reports to Parliament’s Committee on Petitions when institutions fail to respond satisfactorily to the grievances sent to them."@en1
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