Diamandouros wins vote to be new Ombudsman

Date: 16/01/03

By Martin Banks in Strasbourg

A 60-YEAR-OLD Greek was yesterday appointed the new European Ombudsman.

Nikiforos Diamandouros, currently the national ombudsman in Greece, comfortably beat his main rival, UK Conservative Roy Perry, by 294 votes to 215 in a ballot of MEPs in Strasbourg.

Voting went to a second round after Diamandouros failed to win the absolute majority needed for victory in the first round. Perry, a former college lecturer and council leader, was officially backed by the European People's Party group, the biggest in the assembly.

However, he lost votes because many of his colleagues in the chamber were uneasy with appointing "one of their own" to the post. Several MEPs, including Dutch Green Kathalijne Buitenweg and Danish Socialist Helle Thorning-Schmidt, expressed such fears during a televised eve-of-ballot debate hosted by European Voice and the Campaign for Parliamentary Reform.

Three other candidates dropped out after the first round: Pierre-Yves Monette, from Belgium, polled 73 votes; Italian regional ombudsman Giuseppe Fortunato 35 votes; and Herman Wuyts, federal ombudsman in Belgium, 16 votes.

Diamandouros, widely held to be the most experienced of the five candidates, succeeds Finn Jacob Söderman who has held the job since it was established in 1995. He is taking early retirement and will step down in April. Diamandouros has been the Greek national ombudsman since 1998, dealing with more than 15,000 complaints, of which 92 were successfully completed in favour of the complainant. He said he wants to "bring academic and practical knowledge of history, politics and culture" to his new job.

"I want to build on the foundations laid by Söderman to help citizens exercise their rights, point out maladministration and to maintain and promote the rule of law throughout EU institutions," he added.

Diamandouros, who has held teaching posts at universities in America, wants to see the code of public administration and charter of fundamental rights become legally-binding. He also pledged to promote the role of the office, which remains relatively little-known in some member states.

The Greek's success was welcomed by Spanish MEP Enrique Barón Crespo, leader of the Socialist group which, along with the Liberals and Greens, backed his candidature.

Barón Crespo said: "At the beginning of this process we took a clear decision that the election of a new Ombudsman should not be a political contest and that our support for any particular candidate would be on the basis of competence and experience.

"We also agreed not to vote for any present or former MEP for the post. It is clear to any objective observer that Professor Diamandouros admirably fulfils the conditions required for the position of EU Ombudsman and I am happy to note that support for his candidature was also to be found in other political groups of the Parliament."

Diamandouros speaks five languages, has taught political science at Athens University since 1968 and before that was director and chairman of the national centre for social research in Greece in 1995-98. Söderman, a former Finnish justice minister, was elected as the first European Ombudsman in June 1995 and was re-elected in 1999. His successor will serve until the end of the current Parliamentary term in 2004.

Nikiforos Diamandouros, currently the national ombudsman in Greece, has been appointed as the new European Ombudsman, 15 January 2003.