Slovenia's Ombudsman Matjaz Hanzek is attending a first meeting of the newly-appointed board of directors of the European section of the International Ombudsman Institute (IOI) on Monday. The meeting is hosted by the Austrian ombudsman and is taking place in Vienna.
The first meeting of the new board, which was appointed two months ago, will try to set fresh guidelines of the European Ombudsman Institute for the next four years. Moreover, regional directors are to be assigned new tasks.
When the new board of directors was appointed, only Slovenia's Hanzek was not relieved of his duties, remaining in charge of Central and Eastern Europe, the Ombudsman's Office said.
The new directors that joined Hanzek are Ritta-Leena Paunio of Finland, Northern Ireland's Thomas Frawley and Austria's Peter Kostelka, who is president of the European Ombudsman Institute.
Among the topics of the Vienna meeting are the new ways of exchanging information between ombudsmen at the time of IT, and the development of the concept of ombudsman in the region.
The latter is a field where the Slovenian ombudsman could play an important role, his office said, given that the institute of ombudsman has not been yet developed in some parts of the Balkans.
The International Ombudsman Institute was set up in 1978 to unite ombudsmen from around the world in an attempt to promote the concept of ombudsman and facilitate its development.