Cases
It is a right of an EU citizen, in the EU treaties, to be able to take a case to the ombudsman. (Article 20:2d TFEU) Each year the ombudsman receives about 3,000 to 4,000 complaints. 60–70% of these are related to the European Commission, 12% to Parliament and 10% to the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO): from dissatisfied applicants to the European Civil Service. The European Anti-fraud Office (OLAF) accounts for 9%.
These cases include a late payment from the Commission to a German science journalist. The Commission explained why, paid interest and accelerated future payments to experts. Following a complaint form a Hungarian, EPSO agreed to clarify information in recruitment competition notices concerning eligibility and pre-selection tests. Finally, the Ombudsman forced the Council to release documents to the public it previously denied existed.
However the ombudsman has a relatively low profile, particularly in the United Kingdom which was responsible for the smallest amount of cases lodged despite its eurosceptic reputation.
Read more about this topic: European Ombudsman
Famous quotes containing the word cases:
“There are some cases ... in which the sense of injury breeds—not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but—a hatred of all injury.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“We noticed several other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by its yellow sand-banks, though the river itself is for the most part invisible. Lawsuits, as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these causes. Railroads have been made through certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms into deserts, and the company has had to pay the damages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In most cases a favorite writer is more with us in his book than he ever could have been in the flesh; since, being a writer, he is one who has studied and perfected this particular mode of personal incarnation, very likely to the detriment of any other. I should like as a matter of curiosity to see and hear for a moment the men whose works I admire; but I should hardly expect to find further intercourse particularly profitable.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)