Debate: Activities of the European Ombudsman – annual report
Date: TUESDAY, 9 MARCH 2021
Speaker: EMILY O'REILLY
Language: EN

I always find this a very informative and very useful part of the year because it gives me confirmation in the direction that I am taking, and it also adds other elements in relation to where I might take the work of my office. Of course, all of the work that I do, whether the individual complaints that I get from citizens, from Members of Parliament, from business, from civil society, and also all of the investigations that I do, are inspired by the work of Parliament, the work of the institutions, and also the concerns that are brought to me by citizens.  Just to go through some of the comments that were made: obviously transparency was very much to the forefront of the comments that were made. I think what people were trying to say was that in order to give, to really execute and to allow citizens to exercise their right to take part in the democratic life of the Union, they have to know what’s going on, and they get that through the transparency of the institutions and that is why it’s so important. Mr Agius Saliba, you talked a lot about my work on disability and accessibility. Again, that goes to the heart of what I just said in relation to people being able to take part in the life of the Union and they can only do that if everything is also made accessible to them, and particularly people who might struggle, people who might have disabilities. Ms Strugariu, revolving doors, and Ms Gancia, that was also mentioned by you and by Daniel Freund. What I keep saying in relation to this particular issue is, rules are there but they’re not always being implemented, and even though I and you believe that there’s a huge public interest in dealing with this particular challenge, I’m not convinced that there’s a strong cultural acceptance necessarily of why this is important.  Ms Auken, yes, the transparency of the Council: things are moving slowly but in the right direction. Ms Złotowski, negotiations on vaccine contracts, access to documents, those are cases that we’re actually dealing with at the moment. Ms Rego, transparency and Frontex, you mentioned as well: we currently have two significant investigations going in relation to some of the issues that you mentioned. Ms Rookmaker, you want more regular reporting. I think you were talking very much from a private-sector perspective, which is always refreshing. I would very much like to engage as much as Parliament wishes me to be engaged in your work and to come and report to you on what I’m doing. I should say that even though the 2019 report does seem quite a long time ago, I actually signed off on the 2020 report just two weeks ago, so I’m willing to come before this Parliament as soon as Parliament is ready.  Mr Rangel, I greatly appreciated your comments in relation to the structure and the independence of the office, which is its core. Ms Maestre, yes, the office should not rest on its laurels, I very much appreciate that. Ms Vedrenne, the Conference on the Future of Europe, also incredibly important for citizens, and we hope to be able to make our input into that. You also noticed the transparency of the Brexit negotiations, perhaps in contrast to other negotiations that are ongoing and I think Brexit set a template for that and the world did not collapse around it because of the transparency that was there and it’s something that we worked very hard on with Mr Barnier and his team.  Thank you for the general comments on the support for my work. Clinical trials, vaccines, yes, we worked very closely with the European Medicines Agency (EMA). I have to say in relation to EMA that they are very open with us and collaborate very strongly with us.  Mr Freund, highlighting conflicts of interest again, the reluctance to tackle this, I have already mentioned that. Mr Kósa, the accessibility of the EU websites particularly in relation to, different websites: we have worked on that. We will continue to work on that and thank you for highlighting it again. Mr Benifei, cancer transparency, an ongoing project with us and with you. Conflicts of interest: interns. We’ve worked on that before and we hope that all of the institutions take up the recommendations that we’ve made. The transparency of EMA, another issue that was brought up, clinical trials, vaccinations, those I’ve already mentioned.  Again, I thank you all. I thank Ms Guillaume and the rapporteurs for all the really engaged work they’ve done. I thank you for your support. It’s lovely to come here and hear it verbalised in that way. And as I said, it gives me and my team confidence in what we are doing. So thank you very much for the engagement. As I’ve always said, an ombudsman is only as good as the support that he or she gets from Parliament, and I have received great support from this Parliament and that enables my office to do what you would wish it to do, so thank you very much.