The living standard, working conditions, problems with the education, healthcare systems or recognition of property rights are the main dissatisfactions that citizens expressed in the petitions they sent to the Ombudsman last year, according to this institution's activity report for 2024 released on Tuesday.
"Mainly, our activity consists of receiving and resolving petitions submitted by any natural person, regardless of their citizenship, who considers that their rights have been violated by the public, central and local administration. In 2024, we received more than 12,000," reads the abovementioned activity report.
"We do not have the possibility to decide for ourselves in place of the respective administrative authority or to sanction anyone, not even when the authorities ignore our requests or simply do not respond to us (unlike other similar institutions in the world that do have the right to sanction the authority that does not cooperate, for example, the case of the Spanish Ombudsman, Defensor del Pueblo, from which we also borrowed the name," the report states.
According to the abovementioned document, the institution acted on its own initiative over 3,600 times last year.
"In order to be able to act on our own initiative, it is necessary to learn about a certain situation, which most often happens following a report from the central or local media, less often from social networks and very rarely following reports from a non-governmental organization," the report explains.
Also, the Ombudsman receives about 1,200-1,300 petitions annually requesting to address the Constitutional Court on various legal texts.
"Unfortunately, there are also politicians and journalists or political analysts who accuse us of political partisanship, although it is obvious that any decision we make, whether or not to refer the matter to the Constitutional Court, will displease some and satisfy others, and interpreting such a decision in a political light is actually a form of undermining the independence and authority of the institution. The decision whether or not to refer the matter to the Constitutional Court is not an arbitrary measure of the Ombudsman, but is the result of a thorough analysis of the respective normative act, by reference to the constitutional norms and the jurisprudence of both the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice," the report continues.
According to the Ombudsman, reducing the activity of the Ombudsman institution to the notification or non-notification of the Constitutional Court is not only "a big mistake", but it is "unfair" in relation to the thousands of cases, in fact we are talking about tens and tens of thousands of cases over time, solved in favour of the petitioners, of the "ordinary" people of this country whose rights were respected following the intervention of the Ombudsman, that is, the fulfillment of the purpose for which the institution was created by the Constitution of Romania.
The Ombudsman highlights that the "main conclusion" it drew from the petitions received in 2024 concerns dissatisfaction with the standard of living, working conditions, education, health, recognition of property rights, respect for pension rights or other social insurance.
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