The Spread of the Ombudsman Idea in Europe

All over the world, the very word “ombudsman” evokes feelings of security, protection and freedom. Today, the constitutional ombudsman concept is intrinsically tied to the ideas of democracy, rule of law and human rights. The “ombudsman idea” originated in Sweden. Inspector General in Swedish language is called ombudsman. In order to protect individual freedom, the institution ideally correlates democracy with the ideas of the rule of law.This paper examines the hows and whys of that success and finally presents models including the basic or the classical model, the model of rule of law and human rights model.