60 | Annual Report 2019 Ministry had put itself in a situation where the question of deliberate protraction could arise at all. The Ombudsman had no grounds for criticising the practice of the Ministry of Immigration and Integration whereby medical details of the applicant, including information about whether the applicant’s disease currently requires treatment, should be as recent as possible and as a general rule not older than six months in order that a humanitarian residence permit may be granted on the basis of the medical details. However, the Ombudsman was of the opinion that such a practice places a responsibility on the Ministry to ensure that the processing of this type of case does not drag on. 2019-14. Freedom of choice of procedure for extracting and granting access to information is not sufficient grounds for delay in processing of request for access An internal e-mail at the Ministry of Immigration and Integration contained information about the factual basis of a case which was subject to the right of access under section 28(1) of the Access to Public Administration Files Act on the requirement to extract and grant access to certain information. In its original decision, the Ministry chose, with reference to section 28(2) paragraph (3) of the Act, to provide references to various locations on the Internet where the Ministry considered the information to be publicly available instead of giving the journalist requesting access direct access to the information. While the Ombudsman was investigating a complaint from the journalist, the Ministry made a decision to give the journalist access to the information in the form of a document listing the information which had been extracted. The Ombudsman subsequently stated that the journalist had now been granted access to the information to which he was entitled under the Access to Public Administration Files Act. At the same time, the Ministry expressed its regret that some of the references it provided in its original decision were not fully adequate. The Ombudsman concurred with this. The Ombudsman further stated that he found the Ministry’s total processing time of more than eight months prior to its original decision very regrettable. More specifically, the Ministry had not carried out any actual processing in relation to the e-mail for a period of about seven months, after which it took the Ministry about five weeks to process the case to conclusion. There was a delay of some weeks during the final processing of the case due to the fact that the Ministry had chosen a time-consuming procedure for extracting and granting access to the information. In the Ombudsman’s opinion the fact that section 28 of the Access to Public Administration Files Act gives authorities a certain freedom of choice of procedure for extracting and granting access to information did not constitute sufficient grounds for the delay. 2019-15. Efforts of Ministry of Immigration and Integration to rectify errors following judgement by European Court of Human Rights In December 2016, the European Court of Human Rights made a judgement (in the case of Paposhvili v Belgium) which had implications for Danish practice in cases about humanitarian residence permits. However, the Ministry of Immigration and Integration did not change its practice until early 2018. A consequence of this was that specific cases were not processed correctly and that people were deported or otherwise left the country without their cases having been processed correctly in the light of the judgement. The Ombudsman carried out an investigation on his own initiative of the Ministry’s efforts to rectify the errors which were the result of the Ministry changing its practice too late.