NGOs under European Convention on Human Rights / Tymofeyeva

guarantees envisaged by the EU Charter, which are similar to those covered in the CoE Convention and Charter, must be interpreted in the same way. Additionally, in accordance with Article 6 of the Treaty on European Union , 151 the EU agreed to accede to the Convention. Moreover, the fundamental rights, as guaranteed by the Convention, constitute general principles of the Union’s law. Consequently, the definition given in the Convention may be seen as obligatory in the EU. The EU also has its own body managing human rights breaches, namely, the European Ombudsman (hereinafter also referred to as the ‘Ombudsman’). The Ombudsman is an independent and impartial body that investigates complaints about maladministration in EU institutions, bodies, offices, and agencies. According to the EuropeanOmbudsman’s guide to complaints , 152 any association may complain of a violation of its rights. In the section titled ‘Examples of cases handled by the European Ombudsman’, there is an exact example of the assistance to an NGO. The Ombudsman helped settle a dispute between the European Commission and an NGO concerning an EU project launched as part of the ‘European Migration Dialogue’. In the result, the NGO received back EUR 70 000. 153 It is clear that the EU cooperates with NGOs, but nowhere in its documents is an explanation of the expression ‘NGO’ given. In the next section of this Chapter, we will focus in detail on how the Court interprets the concept of the ‘NGO’ in Article 34 of the Convention. Further, a comparison will be made between the definition of ‘NGO’ in different parts of the Convention and in the Rules of Court. This comparison, along with an evaluation of the explanations of ‘NGO’ in the doctrine of international law and the universal and other regional instruments, will be helpful for giving a definition of the term ‘non governmental organisation’ for purposes of this book.

151 Treaty on European Union, 26 October 2012, Official Journal of the European Union , C 326/13. 152 European Ombudsman’s guide to complaints, Germany, EU publications, 2011. This booklet is published on the Internet at: http://www.ombudsman.europa.eu. 153 See < http://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/atyourservice/infosheet.faces#hl6> accessed 20 July 2015.

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