In 2015, a UN Committee found that the health insurance scheme for EU staff members, the Joint Sickness Insurance Scheme (JSIS), does not comply with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). The committee recommended that the JSIS be revised to offer comprehensive coverage for disability-related health needs.

After receiving complaints from staff members, who had encountered problems getting their own or their family members’ medical expenses fully reimbursed, the Ombudsman conducted a strategic inquiry. She found that the failure of the European Commission to take any effective action in response to the committee’s recommendation amounted to maladministration. She thus recommended that the Commission revise the rules governing the JSIS. She also made a number of suggestions to the Commission relating to how the needs of persons with disabilities are covered under the JSIS, as well as on the need to train staff and properly consult stakeholders to ensure the JSIS reflects the needs of persons with disabilities.

The Commission replied, stating that it will revise the rules governing the JSIS and will take action to follow up on most of the Ombudsman’s suggestions.

As the Commission has accepted her recommendation, the Ombudsman closes her strategic inquiry. Given the importance of the issue, she asks the Commission to report back within six months on the implementation of the recommendation. The Ombudsman also confirms her suggestion on the need for the Commission to review its 2004 rules on accommodating the needs of staff with disabilities.

The case concerned the European Personnel Selection Office’s (EPSO) handling of a complaint about the conditions at a test centre for a selection competition for EU civil servants. The complainant had been assigned a computer beside the entrance door, and claimed the disruption caused by people entering and leaving the room negatively affected her performance. Her attempts to have her concerns dealt with by staff at the test centre were unsuccessful and she subsequently complained to EPSO. Dissatisfied with how EPSO dealt with her complaint, she then turned to the Ombudsman.

The Ombudsman inquired into the issue and requested that EPSO look into the complaint more thoroughly. The Ombudsman’s inquiry team also met with representatives from EPSO and the contractor responsible for managing the tests, and visited a test centre at EPSO’s headquarters. The Ombudsman concluded that, overall, further inquiries in this case were not justified; however, she made a number of suggestions for improvement to EPSO.

The case concerned the rejection by the European Union Advisory Mission Ukraine (EUAM) of the complainant’s application in a selection procedure. The Ombudsman inquired into the issue and found that there was no maladministration as regards the rejection of the application. The Ombudsman further found that a one-level administrative review mechanism is sufficient. Finally, the Ombudsman was pleased to be informed that the European External Action Service has now decided to amend the message it sends to rejected candidates in order to include information on available remedies.

The complainant, who works for the Court of Justice of the European Union on a temporary contract, applied for an EPSO competition to recruit conference interpreters. The Notice of Competition stated that completed applications had to be submitted by 6 August 2013 at noon. The complainant missed the deadline. On 7 August 2013, she informed EPSO that she had been hospitalised from 5 to 6 August 2013 and therefore had not been able to complete her application on time. On 7 August 2013, she requested EPSO to extend the deadline. EPSO refused. Its main reason for refusing was, it stated, that it must treat all applicants equally.

The Ombudsman inquired into the issue and made the preliminary finding that EPSO had failed to consider whether the complainant’s circumstances amounted to a situation of force majeure. She thus recommended that EPSO (i) acknowledge that there are situations where, because of force majeure, it is fair and proper that candidates should be given a new deadline; (ii) clarify the circumstances in which such a new deadline should be set; and (iii) inform candidates accordingly. EPSO initially rejected the Ombudsman's recommendations and argued that it would be difficult to draw a line between different justifications put forward by candidates and to set out how candidates would prove that force majeure had occurred. It added that allowing candidates to invoke force majeure would jeopardise both the smooth running of open competitions and the equal treatment of candidates. It also referred to statistics which, it argued, proved that dealing with all the requests for deadline extensions after the deadline has expired would be an administrative burden for EPSO.

However, following meetings between Ombudsman and EPSO staff, EPSO finally accepted the recommendations of the Ombudsman in principle. As regards the specific case of the complainant, however, the Ombudsman noted that the competition in question had ended. She also noted that the complainant had chosen not to comment on the response of EPSO to her recommendations. In view of this, the Ombudsman considered that there were no grounds for further inquiries into whether the complainant’s case met the requirements of force majeure that EPSO now, in principle, agrees to apply.

The complainant is an IT company which participated in a Commission tender. The Commission asked all tenderers to complete two case studies to allow it to evaluate their technical abilities.

The complainant took issue with the fact that one of the case studies was very similar to a tender recently organised by an EU agency. It alleged that this gave the companies which had won that tender a competitive advantage in the Commission tender. The complainant also took issue with the Commission's decision not to disclose the names of the persons who evaluated the proposals for the Commission.

Following her inquiry, the Ombudsman concluded that the Commission's design of the tender procedure did not confer a competitive advantage on the winning tenderer. As regards the disclosure of the names of the evaluators, the Ombudsman suggests that the Commission consider releasing such names in the future.

The case concerned Eurojust's policy for the reimbursement of travel expenses of candidates invited to an interview.

The complainant turned to the Ombudsman alleging that Eurojust's reimbursement policy was unfair and discriminatory towards candidates residing outside the EU. In support of his allegation, the complainant noted there was a ceiling of 500 EUR for candidates residing outside the EU whilst, in some cases, a higher ceiling applied for travel from within the EU.

The Ombudsman inquired into the issue and found that, by increasing the reimbursement for candidates residing outside the EU to the highest ceiling applicable to candidates travelling inside the EU, Eurojust has taken appropriate action to settle the case.

The complainant, a French citizen who is deaf from birth, participated in a staff selection procedure for the EU institutions. The European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO), which organises these staff selection procedures, refused to give him extra time to sit the computer-based admission test (CBT), arguing that all relevant information, as well as the test itself, was done in writing. The complainant turned to the Ombudsman, arguing that had EPSO failed to take into account that in some cases persons with hearing impairments need more time to understand written texts.

The Ombudsman found that the complainant had provided EPSO with full information about his impairment only after he had taken the test. On the basis of the information available to it at the time, EPSO had thus dealt properly with the complainant's request for extra time to sit the CBT. The Ombudsman therefore found no maladministration by EPSO.

However, for the purposes of her inquiry, the Ombudsman conducted a stakeholder consultation which revealed that a number of Member States give additional time to students with hearing impairments when they sit written tests. In closing this inquiry, the Ombudsman therefore suggested that EPSO carefully reconsiders whether, in future cases, it should allow extra time for candidates with a hearing impairment where this is requested in the case of CBTs and written tests.

The complainant, a consortium of olive oil producers from Italy, complained to the Ombudsman concerning the Commission's decision to co-finance, under different conditions, two simultaneous programmes promoting the sale of olive oil outside the EU. In the complainant's view, inconsistencies between the terms of these programmes resulted in a competitive advantage for Spanish olive oil producers.

In the course of her inquiry, the Ombudsman found that the EU legislator had adopted new regulations with provisions on improved coordination of the two funding programmes, which implies that cases such as the present will not occur in the future. The Ombudsman thus considered the systemic aspect of the complaint to have been resolved. However, the Ombudsman found that she was not in a position to address the complainant's individual situation. She therefore closed the case.

The case concerned the Commission's visual identity logo, used in its Brussels press conference room since 2012. In the complainant's view, the exclusive use of English and French in that visual identity logo constitutes discrimination on the basis of language.

The present language regime of the EU includes the right of each citizen to communicate with the EU's institutions in his or her own language and the corresponding right to receive a reply in that language. The principles governing this language regime apply also to other forms of communication, such as communication through publications and websites. Any differentiation in the use of languages in such circumstances should be objectively justified. As to whether there is an objective justification in the present case, the Ombudsman agrees that it is technically not possible to present the term "European Commission" in 24 languages on a television screen, either below, alongside or behind a speaker.

As to whether the Commission could have chosen more than two languages, the Ombudsman finds that it was reasonable for the Commission to have chosen just two languages. The choice of the number of languages to use comes down to a judgement call as to whether more than two languages would clutter the visual image in an unacceptable way. The fact that other combinations of languages may also be reasonable choices does not imply that the choice of English and French was not reasonable.

The Ombudsman considers that the policy chosen by the Commission was objectively justified. She thus concluded that the Commission's introduction of a new visual identity logo in its Brussels press conference room did not constitute maladministration.