102 CASE NO. 15/03253 CASE NO. 15/03395 In two cases, employees in a region had been dismissed without being consulted because the region had not been aware of the fact that the official digital mailbox (e-Boks) could not receive documents exceeding 10 MB. The region had sent consultation letters to the employees but due to a number of massive attachments, the consultation letters had failed to arrive. The Ombudsman received an enquiry from an employee at an Indian newspaper who wanted help to collect a debt from a citizen in Denmark. The Dane had placed a marriage advertisement in the newspaper, but the newspaper had never received payment for the advertisement. The employees’ union wrote to the Ombudsman that the dismissal cases ought to be retried because the employees had not been consulted. The union had also brought the cases before a board of dismissal. The Ombudsman rejected the case, partly because the cases were pending in the labour law system, partly because the Ombudsman does not usually engage in cases which can be processed within the labour law system. In his case assessment, the Ombudsman includes, among other things, the practice which has been established through the Ombudsman institution’s 60 years of service. CASE NO. 15/04138 During a monitoring visit at an accommodation facility for the mentally handicapped the Ombudsman’s staff were surprised to find out that the municipality had given an open-ended permission for an alarm and a door-opener at a resident’s home. Legally, the alarm and the door-opener – which were meant to prevent the resident from leaving the facility and exposing herself or others to danger – were measures normally allowed only for a limited period of time. Therefore, when the case on the monitoring visit was concluded, the Ombudsman opened a case concerning the authority for the open-ended permission and asked the citizen’s municipality for a statement. The municipality replied that it had now realised that there was no authority to give an open-ended permission for the alarm and door-opener. The municipality would discuss this with the accommodation facility and possibly make a new decision on the use of the alarm and door-opener. The Ombudsman concluded the case with criticism that, for a period of time, there had been no authority for the measure. Sometimes, monitoring visits throw light on conditions for individual citizens which the Ombudsman chooses to look into in a separate case. The Ombudsman could not help, as he could neither process a complaint about the private individual who had placed the advertisement nor the bank which the citizen had allegedly used to transfer money to the newspaper. As a key rule, the Ombudsman cannot investigate complaints about private individuals or businesses. In some cases, he may monitor private institutions. CASE NO. 15/03450 It made headlines when the new centre-right government decided to shut down the Iraq and Afghanistan Commission. The Commission was appointed by the former, Social Democrat-led government, and its task was to investigate certain questions on Denmark’s involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A citizen complained to the Ombudsman about the shutdown of the Commission. However, the Ombudsman found the matter to be of such a political nature that he ought not to handle the complaint in order to protect the Ombudsman institution’s political neutrality. The Ombudsman often processes cases which encompass both legal and political aspects. He always assesses solely the legal ones. Very rarely, a case may be of such a political nature in overall terms that he abstains from assessing even the legal aspects.