Fundamental Rights Section to drag out a case of settling a request for legal protection for years. Therefore, the AOB announced that allowing the proceedings on which the ruling was based to last almost 13 years was contrary to the rule of law and therefore constituted a grievance in administration. 2.2.2.3 Proceedings lasting five years upon issuing a BMLUW appeal ruling (VA BD/78-LF/03, BMLF 13.812/26-I 3/2003) [Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, the Environment and Water Management] In the course of investigative work, the AOB discovered that appeal proceedings had taken a conspicuously long time in granting authorisation under water laws to remove and return groundwater for a heating pump. No matter how reasonable the duration of proceedings are to be adjudged according to the circumstances on an individual case and how much consideration is to be taken in particular of the complexity of such a case from the factual and legal point of view, the reasons the authorities gave could in no way justify the five-year duration of these proceedings. Therefore, the delays determined in the proceedings under consideration were to be ascribed to the predominant fault of the authority and the AOB were to file a grievance on the halting progress in the proceedings. 2.2.2.4 Three instances of refusal to rule -BMLFUW (VA BD/156-LF/02, BMLF 680.255/17-I6/02) [Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, the Environment and Water Management] The spouses N.N. filed a grievance that the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, the Environment and Water Management had still not handed down an alternative ruling one and a half years after suspending its ruling of May 11, 2001 acknowledged by the Constitutional Court of Justice on October 18, 2001. Since the complainants’ petitions dated December 16, 1998 were not settled in a reconstructable manner until about four and a half years later by virtue of a ruling dated June 25, 2003, the grievance under consideration proved to be justified. 15