In this framework, the Portuguese Ombudsman considered that by preventing, without any additional administrative or judicial evaluation in each specific case, the exercise of a professional activity (in this case a private security activity) by those who were definitively convicted of committing an intentional crime, such rules contradicted the constitutional statement according to which no punishment automatically implies, as a necessary or automatic effect, the loss of any civil, professional or political rights — article No. 30 (4) of the Constitution, in combination with its article No. 47 (1), inasmuch as this case it is about the freedom to exercise a profession. • Case Q-2287/16 Date: 2016.12.21 Subject: Accidents at work and occupational diseases affecting those employed by public entities; limitation of indemnity Status: Pending An initiative was prompted by the Ombudsman following several complaints (most of which neither encompassing nor claiming the constitutional dimension of the issue), aimed at the successive abstract review of a set of rules laid down in the legal framework on accidents at work and occupational diseases affecting those employed by public entities (Decree-Law No. 503/99, of November 20, as amended by Law No. 11/2014, of March 6). These rules prohibit the accumulation of benefits in cases of partial permanent incapacity with the corresponding portion of the pay to which the injured or affected worker is entitled to, as well as entail the deduction of such benefits from the injured or affected worker’s pension (the same applying to death and survivors’ pensions). The Ombudsman considered that these limitations on the accumulation of benefits resulted in the negation of the reparation of the damage caused to the worker’s health, body or earning capacity, amounting to an infringement of the Constitution. Indeed, not only the Constitution entails the provision of means to overcome or, at least, compensate for a damage of that kind as an integral part of the fundamental right of workers to fair reparation in case of an accident at work or an occupational disease, but also unjustified differentiations in treatment are precluded by the constitutional principle of equality, whereas, in this case, the concerned rules on accumulation of benefits disadvantage those employed by public entities, when compared to the other employees, subject to the Labour Code. | 155