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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