General state of the office When Parliament passed Act No. 248 of 30 March 2011 to amend the Aliens Act, the Parliamentary Ombudsman became responsible, from 1 April 2011, for monitoring deportations of citizens of third countries (non-EU countries) staying illegally in Denmark. The purpose of the Act was to implement the changes to the Aliens Act ­required by EU Directive 2008/115/EC of 16 December 2008 on ­common standards and procedures in Member States for returning illegally staying third-country nationals (the deportation directive). Pursuant to Article 8(6) of the Directive, member states must provide an effective system for monitoring deportations. Pursuant to section 8(2), first sentence, of the Aliens Act, the Danish police are responsible for foreigners’ departure from the country when their departure is not voluntary. Before the Amendment Act was passed, there was no separate monitoring of police activities in connection with deportations. Pursuant to section 30 a of the Aliens Act, the Parliamentary Ombudsman is responsible for monitoring police deportations. The monitoring covers deportations resulting from return decisions within the meaning of the Directive, cf. Article 6 of the Directive. However, while the Directive only covers deportations of third-country citizens, the monitoring pursuant to the provision in the Aliens Act also includes deportations of EU citizens in order to ensure that they are not in a worse position than third-country citizens. The monitoring covers the period from the Danish authorities’ decision on deportation until its implementation. Pursuant to section 30 a(2) of the Aliens Act, the Ombudsman is particularly to ensure that police activities in connection with deportations are carried out with respect for the individual and without unnecessary use of force. The monitoring is carried out on the basis of the Danish Ombudsman Act. The Ombudsman must therefore assess whether the police act in contravention of applicable Danish law, including Denmark’s obligations pursuant to EU law and international human rights conventions, cf. section 21 of the Ombudsman Act. Insofar as the Ombudsman carries out inspections pursuant to section 18 of the Ombudsman Act as part of the monitoring, he can also assess conditions from human and humanitarian perspectives. The monitoring must be of a general nature. Thus, actual complaints about the behaviour of individual police officers are not to be processed as part of the Ombudsman’s monitoring activities. Such complaints must be ­considered by the relevant complaint bodies. Similarly, the foreigners whose cases the 21