Fundamental Rights Section
ployee, to whom an airport pass will not be issued/from whom an airport pass must be revoked, due to the results of the security examination.
An additional constitutional problem results, if the notification intended to qualify as an official notification – as in the case of this complaint – is exclusively delivered to the civil airport
keeper, but not to the affected employee. In cases of a subsequent security examination,
massive intervention takes place in the constitutionally guaranteed right of the employee to
freedom to exercise a profession, without him receiving an official notification and thus, the
option to assert his misgivings regarding the legality of the decreed measure with the public
courts. However, with this, he is specifically robbed of the legal protection option that the
VfGH has regarded as being constitutionally indispensable, in its case law cited above.
As can be gathered from the official notification, which is the subject of the complaint, the
Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology nevertheless regards the approach chosen as being compulsory, as Article 134a para. 4 does not establish a legal relationship between this person and the ministry. If this view were accurate, Article 134a para.
4 LFG would be unconstitutional, for the reasons mentioned above, due to non-fulfilment of
the requirements of the federal constitutional legal protection system.
The Ombudsman Board concedes that Sect. 134a para. 4 LFG explicitly only looks at the
case of the 'notification' to the civil airport keeper regarding existing security misgivings and
does not expressly mention whether the respective notification must also be sent to the
(potential) employee. However, on the basis of the constitutional situation as described
above, the conformity with the constitution of the legal provisions under discussion can only
be answered in the affirmative, if it is regarded as admissible in an interpretation conforming to the constitution – and thus, consequentially, as necessary – to also deliver the 'notification' from the federal minister to the 'potential' employee negatively affected in its constitutional sphere. That view is supported by the fact that the VfGH (Verfassungsgerichtshof Austrian Constitutional Court) has held that a provision is in line with the Constitution if it is
applied by analogy (e.g. VfSlg. 15.197/1998 and 16.350/2001) and neither the wording of
the legal provision nor the legislator's intention expressly excludes the delivery of the 'notification' at issue to the (potential) employee.
In view of these considerations, the Ombudsman Board resolved unanimously, in the collegial meeting on May 12, 2006, that the official notification of the Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology, with which the application of the plaintiff for access to files
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