European Ombudsman
Unit 3 - Inquiries
Mr Martin Mair
Aktive Arbeitslose Österreich
kontakt
aktive-arbeitslose.at
Strasbourg, 30/11/2017
Complaint 78/2017/TE
Subject: Decision in the above case on the alleged exclusion of the unemployed from the European Commission’s public consultation on the provision of services for the long-term unemployed
Dear Mr Mair,
On 10 January 2017, you submitted a complaint to the European Ombudsman against the European Commission’s alleged exclusionary practices in the public consultation concerning the provision of services for the long -term unemployed. You were dissatisfied with the Commission’s reply to your email of 17 March 2015, which you considered had not yet addressed your concerns. One of the issues you raised was that the Commission failed to make the public consultation in question available in languages other than English, as this would have excluded, from the outset, a large part of unemployed people.
As we mentioned in our letter of 8 February 2017, the Ombudsman is currently investigating the general issue of the Commission’s linguistic policy in public consultations in her case 7/2016/PL. The Ombudsman is well aware of the problems that a restricted availability of public consultations in the EU’s official languages might entail. In view of this ongoing inquiry, however, we considered that there were not sufficient grounds to open a separate inquiry in your case.
Regarding the other issues raised in your complaint, that is, the role of unemployed persons in the public consultation, the alleged lack of the EU’s support for independent and strong associations representing the interests of the unemployed, the alleged short duration of the consultation, the alleged manipulative manner in which the questions were phrased and the possibility submit contributions in paper form, we found that these concerns had not yet been addressed by the Commission in its initial reply to you of 7 April 2015. We therefore contacted the Commission to reply to these concerns, which it did on 18 April 2017.
After an analysis of all the information submitted to our Office, we have decided to close the inquiry into the above issue with the finding that the Commission has settled the complaint.
Please note that the present inquiry concerned the Commission’s failure to reply to the arguments put forward in your email of 17 March 2015 and did
not involve an assessment of the substantive reply sent to you.
Please find enclosed my decision on your complaint.
Yours sincerely,
Lambros Papadias
Head of Inquiries - Unit 3
Enclosure: Decision on complaint 78/2017/TE