CO-OPERATION WITH THE COMPLAINTS MECHANISM OF FRONTEX Protection of the Citizen at the General Inspector of Public Administration, who, however, did not respond to the Ombudsman’s request for a specific timetable for investigation and information of the results. In October 2017, FRONTEX made public to the Ombudsman its letter to the Greek authorities, in which it emphasized that the six month deadline had expired from the conveyance of this first complaint to the European Complaints Mechanism and in turn it asked for information and a timetable for completion of the investigation by the General Inspector of Public Administration. Beyond the question of the infringement of the procedures of the European Complaints Mechanism, the Ombudsman emphasized to the Greek authorities that the issue of readmission of 20.10.2016, which had been ongoing for one whole year, manifestly exceeded any reasonable limit of internal investigation by the Administration. The report by the General Inspector of Public Administration was submitted finally in June 2018, but nevertheless without coming to a conclusion regarding any actions or omissions by the Greek Police, and citing the lack of competence of the General Inspector of Public Administration. The Ombudsman asked from the relevant Ministries for a thorough and urgent investigation of the case so that any grey areas in impressions of a lack of transparency should be eliminated regarding the readmissions. The other two cases that were communicated by the European Complaints Mechanism to the Ombudsman concerned impending readmissions to Turkey, of an Iranian citizen on 27.4.201724 and a Pakistani citizen on 15.5.201725, respectively. Both of them, beyond the right to asylum and the protection against removal, also cited an infringement of the right to an effective remedy and fair trial. The Ombudsman informed the relevant agents that in the respective complaints that had been submitted directly to him, in which he had timely intervened, he had a positive response from the Migration Management Police Division, which finally exempted the complainants from the readmission due to their pending applications for temporary judicial protection. The co-operation of the Ombudsman with every expert national and European agent who aims towards a substantive investigation of complaints and to the decisive safeguarding of fundamental rights, as arise from the above cases, is a given fact. Nevertheless, as regards the provisions for external monitoring of the EU Regulation 2016/1624, the Ombudsman maintains the reservations that he had set down in his previous report26, both for the European Mechanism of Complaints, as well as for the development of a European pool of monitors, in which indeed the Ombudsman, as a national mechanism of external monitoring of returns, 24 Case CMP 003/2017 25 Case CMP 010/2017 26 https://www.synigoros.gr/?i=human-rights.en.recentinterventions.457395 p.15s 23