11.1. Legislative proposals concerning the operation of the NPM
for Fundamental Rights performs the tasks of the NPM besides and simultaneously to performing his other tasks. The effective text of the Ombudsman Act only regulates the human conditions of fulfilling the NPM’s
responsibilities, however, it does not provide on the organisational guarantees of performing these tasks within the Office of the Commissioner for
Fundamental Rights.
In order to be able to comply with the guidelines of the Subcommittee,
I think that the following modification of Section 41(3) of the Ombudsman
Act should be considered: “The Organisational and Operational Rules of the Office shall be defined in a normative instruction by the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights. At the Office, the responsibilities of the National Preventive Mechanism
are fulfilled by an independent organisational unit.”
The Minister of Justice supported this proposal.254
11.1.5. Section 28(4) of the Ombudsman Act stipulates that there shall be
no legal remedy against decisions of the Commissioner for Fundamental
Rights rejecting a petition, or against the reports of the Commissioner. The
problem described below has come up in relation to an NPM report, and
such may emerge on a general basis and related to any and all Ombudsman’s reports.
Related to some of the conclusions drawn by the NPM report on the
visit to the Cseppkô Children’s Home in the spring of 2016, the Director
of the institution brought a personality right lawsuit against the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights for damaging the reputation of the
Children’s Home. In his statement of claim, he requested the Court to
establish that the NPM, “in its report published on November 14, 2016, claiming that children lived in overcrowded conditions in the children’s home operated
by the petitioner, where incidents of drug use, child prostitution, child abuse by
the educators happen, and physical, psychological, and sexual abuse between the
children is rampant, had violated the petitioner’s right to reputation”. He also
requested the Court to oblige my Office, in addition to removing the contested conclusions, to pay three million Forints in tort damages and 1.5
million Forints for material damage, as well as their incidentals, and to
publicly apologize.
The courts acting in the case rejected the claim, however, the Budapest
Court of Appeal acting in the second instance concluded that in a case on
personality rights, it may be the subject of investigation whether there is
internal coherence between the utterances of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights, whether there is any contradiction in the empirical descriptions, and the recommendations and initiatives made as a result of the
254
Section I.4 of Justice Minister ’s letter No. XX-AJFO/ID/267/2018/8 dated on February 27, 2019.
129
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