Summary of the decision: In a decision several years ago, the Parliamentary Ombudsman called attention to a number of procedures within the Swedish Prison and Probation Service involving cell name plates, and welcomed the agency’s stated intention to look into the matter.

It is now apparent that the Swedish Prison and Probation Service has neither implemented any strategic work to identify alternative solutions for identifying inmates, nor given any consideration to national guidance. The agency has stated that work is still required to develop national guidelines on cell name plates. The Parliamentary Ombudsman states that it is regrettable that this has not been done earlier and expresses surprise that no action whatsoever appears to have been taken concerning the matter

The issue of identifying inmates is complex and involves a difficult weighing up of interests, not least in the present strained situation with increasing numbers of inmates on most wings of Swedish remand prisons and prisons, with inmates sharing cells and many newly recruited prison officers. It therefore appears to the Parliamentary Ombudsman that there is a significant need for guidelines on the use and design of cell name plates.

The Parliamentary Ombudsman assumes that the work of preparing written guidelines on the use of cell name plates in remand prisons and prisons is now underway. According to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, the Swedish Prison and Probation Service must ensure that institutions use secure methods for identifying inmates that are also consistent with the rules on secrecy and the processing of personal data, as well as the requirement for enforcement to be designed to counteract the negative consequences of deprivation of liberty.

Press Release

29 January 2026

Adopting a rights-based approach to affordable and energy-efficient housing in the EU

Just and green transition

Environmental and social sustainability

The drive for energy-efficient housing is critical to meet the EU’s climate goals, but it currently risks leaving people behind. A new report from the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) finds that low‑income households, older people and people with disabilities often face barriers when accessing renovation programmes. Tenants are also largely excluded from renovation schemes. Yet, they often live in the least energy-efficient housing and face higher rents or eviction when renovations take place. To address this, the report calls for adopting a human rights-based approach to the energy transition and housing energy policies.

Read report

Buildings are responsible for 34% of energy-related greenhouse emissions in the EU, but 75% of all buildings are not energy-efficient. This underlines the key role housing energy policies can play in tackling climate change. But as house prices have risen by 48% in less than 10 years, quality energy-efficient housing is becoming less affordable for medium- and low-income households.

The report ‘Fundamental rights and housing in the EU’s climate and energy transition’ explores the fundamental rights implications, challenges, gaps, and promising practices when it comes to tackling energy poverty and energy efficiency in housing. It recommends:

• Equal access to renovations: housing renovation measures often rely on purely technical eligibility rules, digital-only procedures or unaffordable co-financing requirements. This inadvertently excludes vulnerable groups, such as low-income households, older people, people with disabilities, those in informal housing and people with low digital or literacy skills. EU Member States should provide targeted outreach and financial support to enable equal access to energy renovations. 
• Stronger safeguards for those in need: efforts to tackle energy poverty and to renovate housing often fail to address the specific needs of low-income households, single parents, or people with disabilities or health issues. National authorities should identify the needs of vulnerable people and take targeted action to address them. 
• Protect tenants’ rights: Over 30% of people in the EU rent property. Many of them are on low incomes and often live in the least energy-efficient housing. Yet, tenants are largely excluded from energy renovation programmes because they typically target landlords. Tenants often bear the costs for renovations by paying higher rents or they face evictions when renovations occur. Member States should protect the rights of tenants and make programmes available to those living in social housing. 
• Consider the needs of people in deprived housing: people living in precarious or informal housing, like Roma settlements, are excluded from renovation programmes and often lack access to energy and electricity. The EU and Member States should address this in anti-poverty and affordable housing measures. 
• Integrating fundamental rights into plans: fundamental rights are rarely considered in national energy and climate plans. Future EU energy and climate rules should require Member States to consider fundamental rights risks and impacts in their national plans. 
• Improve stakeholder engagement: by law, national authorities must consult stakeholders when developing relevant climate and energy policies. In practice, this rarely happens when monitoring or evaluating programmes. Member States should ensure meaningful engagement with relevant stakeholders when designing and implementing policies and show how their input is used. 
• Better access to justice: all Member States have channels for people to complain about issues concerning energy renovations such as inflated costs, poor quality work or excess rent. However, difficulties arise in practice due to the lack of information or clarity about the process. Member States should create independent, transparent and accessible complaints mechanisms. 
• Monitor and collect data: there is no comprehensive EU monitoring framework to evaluate the fundamental rights impact of climate and energy policies. The EU and Member States need to measure the impact of their policies.

The report draws on fieldwork from 10 countries (Belgium, Czechia, Estonia, Germany, Greece, France, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden) as well as desk research across all EU countries and Albania, North Macedonia, and Serbia. 

Quote from FRA Director Sirpa Rautio:

“Governments need to tackle climate change and energy poverty. Cleaner energy and energy-efficiency in housing can help EU Member States to meet climate goals. But in doing so, governments must also implement their fundamental rights obligations, ensuring those in need are not left behind. Every effort should be made to protect the right to adequate housing, and the right to social security and housing assistance.”

For more, please contact: media@fra.europa.eu / Tel.: +43 1 580 30 642 

The Commissioner for Fundamental Rights of Hungary sent open letters to the High Commissioner on National Minorities of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Mr. Christophe Kamp, the Director of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Ms. Maria Telalian, the President of the European Parliament Ms. Roberta Metsola and Public Defender of Rights of the Slovak Republic Mr. Róbert Dobrovodský. In his open letters, Ombudsman Mr. Imre Juhász calls for concrete measures to repeal the incriminated provision of the Slovakian Penal Code.

In his capacity as a National Human Rights Institution, the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights is obliged to stand up against legislation that violates the fundamental rights of Hungarian citizens, as well as to protect the rights that they are guaranteed in the international treaties and the binding documents of the European Union.

He requests action related to the provision of the Slovakian Penal Code entitled “denial of peaceful settlement after the Second World War” running counter to international treaties and certain treaties of the European Union, with a view to preventing criminal legal sanctioning based on the public denial or questioning of the legal documents referred to in the provision, which may also be applied against Hungarian nationals living in Hungary.

It should be clarified that the amendment of the incriminated criminal law protects the “peaceful settlement” that was achieved on the basis of the laws adopted by the representative bodies of the Republic of Czechoslovakia or the Slovak National Council, an integral part of which are those 13 so-called Beneš decrees which basically deprived more than 4,000,000 ethnic Hungarians and Germans of their basic life conditions. These decrees and the subsequent laws that confirmed them have not been formally repealed ever since.
The restriction of the disputes on viewing these legal documents with criminal law instruments raises concerns all the more because in Slovakia, there are continuing expropriation procedures against the current owners of land property, in which those decisions on the confiscation of the land properties owned by ethnic Hungarian and German private individuals that were adopted after the closing of the Second World War but were not executed for administrative reasons for several decades, according to the official Slovak standpoint, are still deemed valid and are used, by recalling these legal documents. Consequently, the legal interest of the disapproved provision of the Slovakian Penal Code that is declared one to be protected by calling for the sentence of imprisonment is the entirety of such legal documents which were built on the collective punishment of people who belonged to an ethnic minority and they served the foundation of the state’s measures aimed at disenfranchisement. 

With regard to all this, this criminal provision is not compatible 
-    with Article 10 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, pursuant to which everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. 
-    with the provision in the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) signed in Helsinki, pursuant to which ensuring respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the legal equality of nationalities, was put as the principle governing the mutual relations of the participating states.
-    as a participant of the Helsinki process, which was also signed by Czechoslovakia, with the spirit of the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, which stipulates that the questions related to national minorities can only be solved satisfactorily in a democratic political framework. The rights of persons of national minorities shall be fully respected as part of universal human rights.
-    with regard to Slovakia’s European Union membership, with Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union, based on which the Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. 
-    with Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, according to which everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.

Thus, based on all the above and in line with the content of these letters, there is a threat that as a result of the chilling effect of the relevant provision of the Slovakian Penal Code, all those who wish to use domestic or international legal remedy because of the legal restrictions committed by the earlier Slovak state and the recent property expropriations committed by referring to the latter, may waive the available lawful instruments of enforcing their rights, in fear of the potential application of criminal legal sanctions, even in case that the sentence of imprisonment for expressing critical opinions against the legal documents generated as part of the “peaceful settlement” after the Second World War does not become general practice.

The incriminated provision of the Slovakian Penal Code primarily affects the ethnic Hungarian minority with Slovak citizenship in the Felvidék (‘Upper Hungary’) region but as consequence of the provisions on the territorial scope of the Slovakian Penal Code, Slovakia may even launch a criminal procedure against Hungarian citizens living in Hungary under this legal title, even for expressing an opinion on the internet. The basic problem, i.e., the grievances suffered by the ethnic Hungarian population in Slovakia after the Second World War can only be peacefully settled by repealing the so-called 13 Beneš decrees, which declared Hungarians collectively responsible for the Second World War, however, I have no competence to propose such action, contrary to the criminal provision that has recently taken effect.
 

Letter of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights of Hungary to the President of the European Parliament Ms. Roberta Metsola.

Letter of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights of Hungary to the Public Defender of Rights of the Slovak Republic Mr. Róbert Dobrovodský, PhD., LL.M.

Letter of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights of Hungary to the Director of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Ms. Maria Telalian.

Letter of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights of Hungary to the High Commissioner on National Minorities of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Mr. Christophe Kamp

Representantes de una asociación acudieron al Ararteko ante la falta de respuesta del Ayuntamiento de Bilbao a una solicitud presentada con objeto de que esa administración adoptase, de manera urgente, un plan de actuación a corto plazo frente a episodios de contaminación atmosférica. Expusieron que, pasados varios meses desde su petición, no habían recibido una respuesta expresa.

Fundamentándose en el derecho de la ciudadanía a una buena administración y en la obligación de las administraciones públicas de tramitar y resolver las solicitudes que se les presenten dentro de los plazos y con los requisitos establecidos en la normativa de procedimiento administrativo común, el Ararteko recomendó al Ayuntamiento que respondiera de manera expresa y motivada a la solicitud.  

En esa resolución, esta institución recuerda también que la normativa sobre calidad del aire contempla la posibilidad de que las entidades locales, en el ejercicio de sus competencias, puedan elaborar instrumentos propios de actuación frente a episodios de contaminación atmosférica, en un marco de cooperación y coordinación con las administraciones competentes.

El Ayuntamiento de Bilbao ha comunicado al Ararteko que acepta la recomendación y ya ha respondido a la asociación. Señala el Ayuntamiento que la competencia principal para la elaboración de esos planes de acción a corto plazo corresponde a la Administración autonómica. No obstante, menciona la oportunidad de elaborar en el futuro un plan municipal alineado con el autonómico y anuncia la apertura de un procedimiento de participación pública en relación con dicho instrumento.

RECOMENDACIÓN

Vitoria-Gasteiz, 29 de enero de 2026

Nella rubrica “Voci in Ascolto”, il Coordinamento Nazionale dei Difensori Civici Italiani apre uno spazio di confronto con Ombudsman, garanti e istituzioni di tutela provenienti da tutto il mondo. L’obiettivo è valorizzare esperienze, metodi e buone pratiche che, pur diverse per contesto e ordinamento, condividono una stessa missione: essere un punto di riferimento imparziale per i cittadini e un ponte tra comunità e pubblica amministrazione.

In questo spirito, ospitiamo oggi la testimonianza di Pierre Heusser, Difensore Civico Municipale di Zurigo, figura di grande esperienza nel campo del diritto sociale e della mediazione istituzionale. La sua voce ci porta dentro la realtà svizzera, dove il ruolo del Difensore Civico si afferma come strumento di dialogo, partecipazione e tutela dei diritti nella vita quotidiana.

1. Potrebbe raccontarci brevemente il suo percorso professionale e come è arrivato a ricoprire il ruolo di Difensore Civico Municipale di Zurigo?

In precedenza ho gestito per 20 anni uno studio legale specializzato in diritto sociale. Con l’avanzare dell’età mi sono reso conto che quasi mai una parte ha completamente ragione e l’altra completamente torto. Una buona soluzione si trova più rapidamente e in modo più duraturo attraverso il dialogo che in tribunale. Quando la mia predecessora è andata in pensione, il Parlamento della città di Zurigo mi ha eletto come suo successore.

2. Quali sono le principali responsabilità del suo ufficio e in che modo incidono sulla vita quotidiana dei cittadini di Zurigo?

I residenti, ma anche i dipendenti della città di Zurigo che non sono soddisfatti dell’amministrazione, possono presentare un reclamo presso di noi. Si tratta di questioni che riguardano la vita quotidiana, come l’assistenza sociale, il comportamento della polizia o i disturbi della quiete pubblica.

3. Quali sono le tipologie di reclami più frequenti?

Problemi con le prestazioni sociali, difficoltà con la polizia, scortesia del personale comunale. I dipendenti comunali lamentano mobbing, abuso di potere e cattive condizioni di lavoro.

4. Può condividere un esempio recente che evidenzi l’impatto concreto del suo lavoro nella tutela dei diritti dei cittadini?

Un uomo, portato via dalla polizia in stato di ebbrezza, si è lamentato del fatto che era stato trasportato senza cintura di sicurezza sul pianale di un furgone. Il viaggio era stato movimentato e lui era stato sballottato da una parte all’altra. Ho organizzato un colloquio chiarificatore con i poliziotti coinvolti, durante il quale tutti hanno potuto esprimere la propria opinione. Alla fine, l’uomo ha chiesto se poteva candidarsi per entrare nella polizia!

5. Quali sono le principali sfide che affronta nel suo ruolo e come le gestisce quotidianamente?

L’amministrazione non sempre comunica in modo comprensibile e spesso non è disposta a reagire in modo adeguato a situazioni eccezionali. In questi casi mi rivolgo non solo ai dipendenti comunali coinvolti, ma anche ai loro superiori, ai quali consiglio corsi di formazione o miglioramenti nelle procedure amministrative.
L’amministrazione è spesso grata per i suggerimenti e le raccomandazioni.

6. Quali valori ritiene fondamentali per il lavoro di un Difensore Civico Municipale?

Indipendenza, incorruttibilità e tenacia. Allo stesso tempo, disponibilità ad ascoltare tutte le parti coinvolte e comprensione delle loro posizioni. Lo sguardo dell’ombudsman deve essere sempre rivolto al futuro.

7. In che modo promuove trasparenza, responsabilità e fiducia tra istituzioni e cittadini a Zurigo?

Sono in stretto contatto con l’amministrazione comunale e il consiglio comunale. Ricordo continuamente che le autorità politiche sono al servizio della popolazione e non viceversa. E sottolineo che è anche nell’interesse dell’amministrazione che i cittadini possano comprendere e accettare le sue azioni e decisioni.

8. Ha collaborato con altri Difensori Civici a livello internazionale? Quali insegnamenti ha tratto da tali esperienze?

In qualità di difensore civico locale, raramente mi capita di dover collaborare direttamente con colleghi all’estero. Ciò rende ancora più prezioso lo scambio regolare di opinioni in occasione di convegni e conferenze su questioni relative all’allevamento, situazioni di consulenza difficili o buona gestione amministrativa.

9. Quali aspetti dell’esperienza italiana o di altre esperienze internazionali ritiene utili per Zurigo?

L’Italia condivide con la Svizzera lo svantaggio di non avere un ufficio nazionale di Difesa civica.
Come i nostri colleghi italiani, anche noi Difensori Civici regionali e comunali svizzeri siamo collegati in rete e ci scambiamo regolarmente informazioni.

10. Guardando al futuro, quali sviluppi o innovazioni immagina per l’istituto del Difensore Civico nella città di Zurigo?

Il nostro ufficio di mediazione dovrebbe essere ancora più conosciuto. Le nostre modeste risorse ci consentono solo una pubblicità limitata. Soprattutto tra i bambini e gli adolescenti siamo ancora troppo poco conosciuti.
Vorrei porre maggiormente l’accento sul contributo che l’ufficio di mediazione può dare alla promozione dei diritti umani.

L’intervista al Difensore Civico Municipale di Zurigo offre uno sguardo prezioso su come l’ascolto, la neutralità e la capacità di mediazione possano migliorare concretamente il rapporto tra cittadini e istituzioni. Esperienze come quella di Mr. Heusser arricchiscono il nostro percorso comune e testimoniano quanto la Difesa Civica, in tutte le sue declinazioni, sia oggi più che mai un presidio democratico essenziale.

Condividere visioni, problemi e soluzioni significa costruire una rete europea più solida, capace di rafforzare la cultura dei diritti e la fiducia dei cittadini.
La rubrica “Voci in Ascolto” continuerà a raccogliere e diffondere queste esperienze, per contribuire a una Difesa Civica sempre più aperta, moderna e vicina alle persone.