The Ombudsman Requests the Minister's Mediation Concerning the Publication of Student Work Opportunities

The terms and conditions for application were not properly worked out, orientation was plagued by basic communication deficiencies. That is how it could happen that there were some settlements where mostly the relatives of the local government's staff members were offered job opportunities within the frameworks of the labour market program entitled "Promoting Summer Student Work" instead of the more disadvantaged young people. In their joint report, the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights and his Deputy in charge of the protection of the interests of nationalities living in Hungary requested the competent minister to clarify the terms and conditions and to improve communication.

The launch of the labour market program "Promoting Summer Student Work" was made public by the State Secretariat for Employment Policy of the Ministry for National Economy in early Summer of 2013 as one of the two new employment programs designed for young people. The program entitled "Road to Choosing a Career" was designed to help disadvantaged young people to gain professional qualification, and the Ministry offered subsidies to local governments in order to facilitate the employment of students during the Summer recess. In their joint report, László Székely, Commissioner for Fundamental Rights and Erzsébet Sándor, Deputy Commissioner for the protection of the interests of nationalities living in Hungary, have called the organization of Summer work opportunities to students an objective to be supported and a way for the state to actively facilitate the implementation of the fundamental rights to learn, to work and to employment.

There were, however, some complaints against this practice, too. Those were investigated by the Commissioner and his Deputy, who found out that there were some settlements where almost exclusively students related to local government and public service officials were employed under the program. It provided grounds for suspecting that the requirement of equal treatment were infringed upon and that students were discriminated on the basis of their nationality. In their joint report, the Ombudsman and his Deputy drew the attention of the local governments concerned to the fact that such infringements could not be compensated by other, however significant and noteworthy, social inclusion programs being under way in their municipalities.

Upon investigating the concrete complaints they established that the poorly elaborated terms and conditions for application, the lack of clearly defined target groups and the basic communication deficiencies had created circumstances giving rise to abuse, thus the fundamental rights to legal certainty and fair procedure were infringed upon and the implementation of the requirements of equal treatment and equal opportunity were not expressly guaranteed, either.

The Commissioner for Fundamental Rights and his Deputy in charge of the protection of the interests of nationalities living in Hungary requested the Minister for National Economy to take the necessary measures to ensure the exact and professional elaboration of the aims, contents and conditions, implementation and supervision of such programs. They emphasized the importance of a detailed communication strategy that should unambiguously present to the local governments and organs concerned the forms and requirements of providing information and assessing needs. At the same time, the Ombudsman requested the Minister to incorporate a set of objective criteria in future programs, which, in parallel with defining equal opportunity criteria for the selection process, would also facilitate the fullest possible enforcement of the requirement of equal treatment.