EU ombudsman tells Czechs he’s there if they need him

European ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros is in Prague this Wednesday as part of a campaign to raise awareness about what he can do to protect European residents’ rights. Mr Diamandouros receives around 3,500 complaints a year, mainly regarding discrimination or maladministration in EU institutions. But what is his job exactly, and how can he help Czechs? I met Nikiforos Diamandouros to find out:

Václav Klaus, Nikiforos Diamandouros, Otakar Motejl (left to right), photo: CTK

“The ombudsman exists to be able to do two things. They help citizens enjoy their rights whenever they have a problem with a public administration, which means that I as European ombudsman will help Czech citizens enjoy their rights when they have a problem with a European public administration, and the Czech defender of rights, Mr Otakar Motejl, will help Czech citizens when they have problems with a Czech public administration. Ombudsmen exist to help citizens deal with problems in their daily affairs with the public administration. In a way the ombudsman is what you would call a human face in the European bureaucracy, and I want your listeners to think of it this way and come to me when they need to.”

Last year you said that you had 66 Czech complaints and of them you dealt with six – 90 percent of complaints are outside of your mandate. Does this not mean that a large part of your job is sifting through things that it is not your job to fix?

“I need to clarify something: yes, six of the 66 were inside the mandate, but I was able to help citizens in 80 percent in all of the cases. That means I was able to provide information and guide the people who came to me about the proper institution to go to. And therefore, no, I don’t just sift, I study, I go into depth examining cases and determine whether something is admissible or inadmissible, and once I have determined that something is inadmissible then I make certain that I can direct the person to the right institution so that the citizen will be spared the problem of being sent on wild goose chases, not able to find out where to complain and how to benefit from their rights.”

What can you actually do if you see some massive infringement of community law or human rights? What can you do to stop it or change it?

“The great advantage of the ombudsman is that he can respond in very customized ways. In other words, I can respond very flexibly to particular problems in terms of their particular needs.

“I have been able to get the European administration to pay compensation to citizens in cases of very major maladministration. I have been able to get them to pay when they were late in paying, I have been able to get them to pay interest in cases of very major delays. I have been able to get them to release documents and information to citizens. In other words, I am able to give concrete results to concrete questions.”