European Ombudsman Keynote speech by the European Ombudsman, Professor P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, at the Fifth Seminar of the National Ombudsmen of the EU Member States, The Hague, 12 September 2005 Speech 1 Opening remarks Good evening everyone. It is a great pleasure to be here among friends and colleagues, old and new, at the first meeting of all the national ombudsmen of the EU Member States since the biggest enlargement ever of the Union. Earlier this year, I attended the annual conference of the British and Irish Ombudsman Association (“BIOA”). There I listened to an excellent after dinner intervention by the UK Parliamentary Ombudsman, Ann Abraham. She stood up and said: “It is the tradition of BIOA conferences not to have after-dinner speeches and I intend to follow that tradition”. Then she sat down, to thunderous and – I am convinced – truly sincere applause. I cannot be as brief as Ann was on that occasion, because our schedule requires me to prepare the way for the discussion tomorrow morning. However, I shall bear in mind that brevity is the most important quality of any speech during or after a dinner, perhaps especially when the speech deals with matters of business. 2 Ten years of the European Ombudsman My starting point is that individual leadership is of fundamental importance in shaping the development of institutions. I believe this both as a political scientist, trained to analyse the relationship between social structures and social actors, and as an ombudsman. The very fact that we are here today is an example of how a strategic choice made by an individual can have decisive and long-lasting institutional effects. Our meeting takes place exactly nine years after the first seminar of the national ombudsmen of the EU Member States , which Jacob Söderman organised in Strasbourg on 12 and 13 September 1996. A year earlier, in July 1995, the European Parliament had elected Jacob as the first European Ombudsman and he began work in September that year. This autumn, therefore, we are celebrating the 10 th anniversary of the European Ombudsman. I am delighted that Jacob is here with us this evening and throughout the seminar. We were both particularly touched by the warm wishes and words of encouragement from our ombudsmen colleagues at yesterday evening's gala dinner marking the 10 th anniversary. The office of European Ombudsman was formally created by the Treaty of Maastricht in the 1 early 1990s. At that time, national ombudsmen existed in only a bare majority (7 out of 12) of the Member States. The enlargement of 1 January 1995 brought three new Member States with national ombudsmen into the Union. These included the world’s oldest and second oldest institutions: those of Sweden and Finland. We all know that since then the ombudsman has conquered the world, but the number of new offices set up has been particularly high in Europe during the last 10 to 15 years. The Council of Europe has played an important role in encouraging and supporting the establishment of ombudsmen, especially in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. In addition, many of the older democracies that were previously without ombudsmen also decided to set up offices during this period. So, by the time of last year’s enlargement, all 10 of the new Member States had a national ombudsman or similar body and three of the old Member States ( Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg ) had created such an ombudsman since the time of the 1995 enlargement. The result is that, today, 23 out of the 25 Member States have a national ombudsman and all four of the candidate countries have either established such an ombudsman, or have announced their intention to do so. Just as important as the number of ombudsmen is the growing recognition among policy-makers at all levels in the EU that the institution has a vital role to play in ensuring good relations between individuals and public authorities. The future prospects of the Constitution for Europe are now uncertain: a matter to which I shall return later. Nonetheless, I am greatly encouraged by the fact that the European Ombudsman finds a prominent place in the Constitution in relation both to fundamental rights and to the Union’s democratic aspirations. I see this as more than just confirmation of a successful first decade for the institution that I now have the privilege to lead. The fact that all the EU Heads of State and Government signed up to these provisions in October 2004 is also, I believe, a more general endorsement of ombudsmanship, reflecting the high level of credibility that ombudsmen in the Member States have achieved, through effective promotion of the rule of law, of principles of good administration and of human rights. 3 The European network of ombudsmen It was therefore a sagacious act of leadership when Jacob Söderman decided to give high priority to co-operation with the national ombudsmen and to invest the resources necessary to organise the first seminar, at a time when there were many other demands on the new 2 office . One of the outcomes of the Strasbourg seminar in 1996 was agreement to set up a flexible form of voluntary cooperation, on equal terms, with the aim of promoting the flow of information about Community law and its implementation and the transfer of complaints to the body best able to deal with them. The initial concrete step was the creation of a network of liaison officers to act as a first point of contact within the ombudsman's office for other members of the network. A pattern was established for organising seminars of the national ombudsmen, every two years in principle, as well as regular meetings of the liaison officers. To date, we have developed effective means of communication through a lively website and internet summit, an electronic daily news service and a biannual newsletter. The result is that we can now truly speak of a European Network of Ombudsmen, that cooperates systematically to exchange information about EU law and best practice and to ensure the effective transfer of complaints. The network now comprises some 90 offices in 29 countries throughout Europe. From the very beginning, Iceland and Norway were included as countries that belong to both Schengen and the European Economic Area and thus share important concerns about the rights of individuals as regards free movement. The network has subsequently expanded in two other ways: - Regional ombudsmen were invited to join because of the importance of the regional level of government in certain Member States, which means that these countries’ regional authorities are in practice responsible for the implementation of many aspects of EU law. - Furthermore, it was decided to invite countries that are candidates for EU membership to join the network. At the last seminar, held in Athens in April 2003, the then ten accession countries were invited to appoint liaison officers. The present fifth seminar of national ombudsmen thus brings together not only all 25 Member States of the European Union, but also two of the four candidate countries, as well as Norway and Iceland. The Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament has also been invited to all the seminars of national ombudsmen and the meetings of liaison officers. The raison d'être of the network The central purpose of our cooperation in the network remains as valid and important today as it was at the outset: that is, to make citizens' and residents' rights under EU law a living reality. 3 The implementation of EU law is largely the responsibility of administrations in the Member States. In practice, therefore, respect for rights depends largely on the quality of their everyday work and on the extent to which supervisory bodies, including ombudsmen, succeed in promoting high quality administration and providing effective remedies when needed. Furthermore, co-operation among the various Member States' administrations and the EU institutions has continued to grow. Looking at the list of 41 EU bodies and institutions that we plan to invite to one of our 10th anniversary events later this year, I was impressed at how many of them (15) have been created within the last five years. Bodies such as the European Police College, the EU Borders Agency, the European Network and Information Security Agency, Eurojust and the European Aviation Safety Agency have strong national representation. Networking is essential to their functioning. They constitute the visible EU tip of the increasing intensity of cooperation among administrations at all levels of the European Union. Such co-operation even extends to problem-solving services for citizens, such as SOLVIT. In order to protect the rights of citizens and residents and provide them with effective remedies, co-operation among administrations needs to be matched by co-operation among ombudsmen. The Athens Resolution and the Constitution for Europe The Athens seminar resolved to maintain and strengthen our cooperation. We also called on the European Convention, which was at the time charged with drafting the Constitution for Europe, to promote provisions in the future Constitution that would ensure a clear and comprehensive system of judicial and non-judicial remedies for the protection of individual rights under EU law. I forwarded the Athens resolution to the European Convention on 28 April 2003. However, although the drafters of the Constitution did indeed recognise the importance of ombudsmanship, as I have already mentioned, they did not specifically refer to non-judicial remedies in the Member States. As we all know, the European Council has agreed that there should be a “period of reflection” before any decisions are made on the consequences of the French and Dutch referenda on ratification of the Constitutional Treaty.