Annual report 2002 - EOI

78 ANNUAL REPORT | 2002
reports of the Committee of Independent Experts or for the manner in which the
Committee conducted its work, the information on which it based its conclusions, nor its
relations with persons actually or potentially concerned by its inquiries. Moreover, the
European Parliament emphasised that it cannot be expected to provide a “notice-board”,
open to all, where arguments in which it has no part and the merit of which it cannot assess
are published. Agreement to publish the complainant’s replies cannot therefore be taken as
a precedent of any sort for further publication of material in its website, either in respect
of the Report of the Committee of Independent Experts or in any other context.
The European Parliament proposed to contact the complainant once it had received the
Ombudsman’s confirmation that it may proceed on this basis.
The complainant’s observations
The complainant confirmed by letter that he is able to acquiesce in the arrangements
outlined in the reply from the President of the European Parliament to the Ombudsman’s
proposal for a friendly solution and looked forward to the European Parliament contacting
him to discuss the implementation of the friendly solution.
THE DECISION
1 The allegations of negligence and of violation of the complainant’s fundamental
right to be heard
1.1 The complainant alleged that the European Parliament is responsible for the violation
of his fundamental right to be heard in the tourism affair. According to the complainant,
the Parliament’s negligent failure to supply the Committee of Independent Experts with
correspondence between himself and office holders of the Parliament concerning the
Wemheuer report resulted in the Committee mistakenly assuming that elements of that
report critical of the complainant were uncontested. In its own report, the Committee of
Independent Experts therefore blamed the complainant for failure to exercise his responsibilities
without hearing him. The complainant claimed that the European Parliament
should now publish a rectification or, alternatively, his rejoinder.
1.2 The Ombudsman considers that it was incumbent upon the Parliament as an institution
to take appropriate corrective action, within its competence, once it became known
that relevant information and documents acquired by the European Parliament’s office
holders in their official capacity had not been communicated to the Committee of
Independent Experts. The Ombudsman further considered that the European Parliament
did attempt to take appropriate corrective action. However, since that attempt failed to
achieve its objectives, the Ombudsman did not consider that the European Parliament had
thereby discharged its institutional obligation to take corrective action. The Ombudsman’s
provisional conclusion, therefore, was that the European Parliament should take further
steps to discharge its institutional obligation to take appropriate corrective action, within
its competence, and that failure to do so could be an instance of maladministration. The
Ombudsman therefore proposed as a friendly solution that the European Parliament
publish the complainant’s rejoinder on its website.
1.3 In reply to the Ombudsman’s proposal, the European Parliament, whilst reserving its
position on the substance, agreed as a gesture of goodwill to the complainant to allow him
to publish his replies to the relevant chapter of the first report of the Committee of
Independent Experts via a hyperlink from the relevant page on the European Parliament’s
website in its different language versions. The complainant confirmed his acceptance of
the arrangements outlined by the European Parliament and looked forward to the
Parliament contacting him to discuss the implementation of the friendly solution.