The members of the AOB take stock When I participated in this year’s “Kirchberger Gespräche” (“Discussions in Kirchberg”), an events forum for the continuing education of judges, I was able to show how our judicial system is experienced and evaluated by citizens: Many people have the feeling – and let us leave it open, whether it is subjective or objective – that they must helplessly accept decisions “from above”. I also deal with specific dire situations in the area of enforcement of the law on building codes and development and planning law. Due to how our areas of competence are distributed, this is a major focus of my activity in addition to issues involving regional and municipal government authorities. It is quite possible that all over Austria many buildings were built contrary to how they had originally been approved. It is quite possible that purchasers of houses only learn of this circumstance after the intervention of building authorities – sometimes decades later – and then face serious legal and economic consequences. The authorities who grant approval deem it appropriate to insist on compliance with the legal norms. Enforcement by the building authorities to create or restore a status that complies with applicable law puts many people in a dire situation because they lack the funds to do so. This is reinforced by the feeling of being treated unequally when neighbours are apparently not harassed by the authorities. And it is really bad when we actually find that this is indeed the case. I can only emphasise again and again that the proverb “Where there is no plaintiff, there is no judge” leads to an incredible loss of confidence in public administration and is not viewed as a friendly gesture by the authorities. In addition to standardisation, practice within the context of a federal government requires a high degree of information and service so that the citizens do not lose confidence in a nation governed by the rule of law. With regard to the question I posed at the beginning about the success of the AOB, I would like to summarise as follows: With the resources that we have, we are able to satisfactorily respond to people’s complaints, to process them to the best of our ability, to address the obvious distortions of the nation governed by the rule of law and to function as a contemporary and humane actor who has (almost) no competition in the field of providers of legal protection. 11