Fundamental Rights Section fringement of the convention. Purely for purposes of completeness, it is therefore added that the legal question pending judgement is anything other than 'particularly difficult'. 2.4 Right to the statutory judge (Art. 83 para. 2 B-VG) 2.4.1 11-year duration of proceedings with the Independent Administrative Tribunal (VA BD/52-I/05, UVS Vienna UVS-PR248/20054, Federal Ministry of the Interior-506/1515-II/1/c/05) In 1994, a plaintiff filed a complaint due to a guideline infringement with the Vienna Independent Administrative Tribunal, which rejected this complaint as being late in 1997. The Administrative Supreme Court rescinded the official notification in 1998, due to illegality of its content. In the investigation procedure of the Ombudsman Board, it emerged that, after the rescission of the official notice, the Vienna Independent Administrative Tribunal carried out an oral hearing, however the file disappeared lateron. The Independent Administrative Tribunal took action to retrieve the file only within the authority at issue, although it harboured the suspicion that the file could have been sent to another authority by mistake. Instead of contacting the competent authority to retrieve or reconstruct the disappeared file, the Vienna Independent Administrative Tribunal just accepted the fact that the file had disappeared. Apart from the fact that the Independent Administrative Tribunal already required more than 2 years for the illegal rejection of the plaintiff’s complaint, it did not order any sufficient steps to end the proceedings during the following seven years. The obligation of the authority to render a decision is already standardised in sub-constitutional law, namely in Sect. 73 AVG (Allgemeines Verwaltungsverfahrensgesetz - General Administrative Procedure Act). A decision must be made on petitions by parties and appeals, without unnecessary delay, at the latest, six months after their submission. In addition to the sub-constitutional provision, which justifies a right to completion of the petition in the form of an (appealable) official notification, reference is also made to the constitutional provision of Art. 83 para. 2 B-VG, which grants the right to the statutory judge. Under the term, 'judge', the VfGH includes every state authority, i.e. also administrative authorities (for the first time in VfSlg. 1443/1932). pursuant to the case law of the VfGH (Verfassungsgerichtshof - Austrian Constitutional Court) the right to the statutory judge is infringed by the official notification from an administrative authority, if the authority assumes a responsibility to which it is not legally entitled or if it illegally rejects responsibility and thus refuses to carry out a decision on a matter (VfSlg. 14.590/1996, etc.). 43