2.2 Lawfulness and proper conduct For individual citizens, legislation and policy tend to translate into legal rights and duties on the one hand and financial entitlements or obligations on the other. This means that the citizen is primarily approached as a homo economicus – that is, as a rational, calculating consumer. It is easy for citizens to be depicted in the political discourse and the media as demanding, selfish and hard to satisfy. However, the primary focus of the National Ombudsman’s work is not on legal rights and financial entitlements, but on the propriety of government action in terms of the General Administrative Law Act. In Dutch society, focused as it is on rationality and the primacy of money, propriety is a less urgent consideration than lawfulness. Legal rights are enforceable; proper conduct is not. However, this sense of priorities ignores the importance of proper conduct in the eyes of citizens. If people are not treated properly, they tend to get upset and this emotional reaction to the behaviour of government is often what underlies complaints and lawsuits. The General Administrative Law Act controls this tension by demanding careful preparation of authorities’ decisions and providing avenues of objection and judicial review, internal complaints procedures, and the right of resort to the local or national ombudsman. However, this creates the risk that the government-citizen relationship may come to be seen – and therefore treated – as primarily legalistic in nature. If an authority’s decision raises doubts in the mind of the recipient, he can express these via the objection and review procedure of which he is notified at the foot of the relevant decision letter. 2.6 million objections and (according to estimates) tens of thousands of complaints are lodged each year. An objection procedure of this kind is the worst thing that can happen to the citizen in his relationship with government.(9 ) Lodging an objection or complaint results in a juridification of the situation that increases rather than relieves the tension between the citizen and the authority concerned. For this reason, we need to reconsider the role played by objections and complaints procedures in the relationship between government and citizen.(10 ) A constant effort to promote proper conduct on the part of government within the established legal and financial frameworks is an integral part of the work of the National Ombudsman. Essentially, government action should be both lawful and proper. When implementing the law, authorities should never simply insist that ‘rules are rules’(11 ) and when exercising their powers they should never lose sight of the relevant aspects of proper conduct. Trust and proper conduct | 6 Pagina 5
Pagina 7Interactieve online folder, deze pdf of onderwijs catalogus is levensecht online geplaatst met Online Touch en bied het van papier naar online converteren van e-nieuwsbrieven.
De Nationale ombudsman - Trust in government Lees publicatie 1Home