By Martin Banks - 4th January 2010
When a mistake occur matters should be put right
Nikiforos Diamandouros
More than a third of complaints about the work of EU institutions to European ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros do not result in any satisfactory follow up.
In 38 per cent of cases in the past year the Strasbourg-based ombudsman said he considered the follow-up to be unsatisfactory.
Diamandourous said, "When a mistake occurs, matters should be put right, if possible, and an apology given if appropriate.
"Then the matter is dealt with and one can move on. An important part of 'moving on' is to profit from the experience with a complaint in order to raise the quality of administration in the future."
In the past year, the Greek official issued 53 critical remarks on matters about EU institutions, including parliament.
These included unjustified refusal of access to documents, non-transparent tender procedures or infringement of the right to be heard.
In 62 per cent of these cases, the institutions gave a positive follow-up response, "thereby making similar maladministration less likely to occur in the future".
Most of the 53 critical remarks issued by the ombudsman concerned the commission.
In one case, where the response was positive, the ombudsman had criticised the commission for delays in paying its bills to a contractor.
The commission's reaction was to take measures to speed up its project management and better to respect payment deadlines.
The ombudsman said he welcomed these measures.
On the other hand, in a case where he had called on the executive to establish a complete register of documents, the commission's response appeared to suggest that it has no intention of doing so, he said.
The ombudsman also identified five "star cases" in which the follow-up to a critical or further remark was exemplary.
In one of these cases, parliament recovered part of an allowance before informing the complainant of its recovery decision.
Parliament acknowledged its mistake and informed the ombudsman that it had adopted measures to avoid similar cases in the future.
The ombudsman also examined the replies he received to "further" remarks.
The purpose of further remarks is to give advice to EU institutions on how to improve the quality of their services in cases where the ombudsman has not found maladministration.
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