By Martin Banks - 28th May 2008
The European ombudsman has criticised the European commission for its refusal to accept applications, for a project for torture victims, in all of the official EU languages.
It follows a complaint from a German non-governmental organisation that the commission's call for proposals was restricted to English, French or Spanish.
The Commission refused to accept a recommendation from the ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros, in which he urged it to accept any EU language in the applications for the programme.
According to the executive, the use of all EU languages was not practical in the field of external assistance.
But Diamandouros branded the commission's arguments as “unconvincing.”
He added, “NGOs have a right to use any of the EU languages when sending documents to the EU institutions.”
The Strasbourg-based official said the commission's refusal to comply with its ‘legal obligation’ constitutes maladministration.
The proposals for a rehabilitation project for torture victims were part of a programme called, "European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights".
Applications were to be submitted in English, French or Spanish.
A German association, offering psychological treatment and social support to refugees and their families, who are victims of torture, wanted to apply and asked the commission to accept the relevant documents in German, as translation would be very costly and time-consuming.
The Commission insisted, however, on a translation of the documents into English.
The NGO subsequently turned to the ombudsman alleging discrimination because of the language restrictions and stressed that the commission had a legal obligation to accept the use of any of the official EU languages in applications submitted in response to its calls for proposals.
In its defence, the executive stated that for projects with third countries, the use of all EU languages was not feasible, because of the costs and the time constraints involved.
The Ombudsman, however, pointed out that the commission has a legal obligation to accept documents in any of the official EU languages and could not see why this case should constitute an exception.
The Greek official has now sent a recommendation to the commission asking it to avoid this kind of discrimination in the future.
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