Decision of the European Ombudsman closing complaint 1043/2015/PMC against the European Court of Auditors

Mr Vítor Manuel da Silva Caldeira President European Court of Auditors

Dear Mr President,

Please find enclosed a copy of my decision letter to the complainant in the above case, in which the complainant alleged that, by replying to his correspondence in English and merely attaching a faulty translation into German, the ECA failed to comply with Article 41(4) of the CFREU and Article 2 of Regulation 1/1958.

In the decision letter, I inform the complainant that I contacted the relevant service of the Court in this regard, and that the Court forwarded to my services the replies it had sent to the complainant.

The two emails forwarded to the Ombudsman show that the Court has (i) acknowledged that there were problems with its automatic translation. More importantly, (ii) the Court has rapidly provided a proper translation into German of its reply to the complainant's information request.

In view of the above, I decided to close the case with the following further remark:

"Principles of good administration require an institution to check the quality of a translated reply before sending it to a citizen. The Ombudsman welcomes the fact that, in the case at hand, the Court rapidly remedied the mistake it had made. However, the Court should make sure that the problem identified in the context of the present complaint is not of a systemic nature and thus risks occurring again."

I would be grateful if the Court could inform me by 31 December 2015 of any action it has taken in relation to my findings. I will take account of these responses to my critical remarks and further remarks when carrying out my annual assessment on how institutions and bodies have reacted to my conclusions.

Yours sincerely,

 

Emily O'Reilly
Strasbourg, 01/07/15

 

Enclosure:

● Copy of decision letter 1043/2015/PMC