They are “intelligent people — but they’re not elected,” she added.
“The culture always comes from the top,” O’Reilly said, referring to a lack of transparency in the EU executive. She added that if information is being “held back for political reasons and that culture comes from the top — then yeah, it probably is the president [von der Leyen] and her cabinet who are setting the culture.”
She called out the Commission’s reticence when it comes to handing over documents, saying the trend is “worrying.”
“You can understand the frustration when we patiently for months go through an access to documents case, we’re quoting [European Court of Justice] law, we’re doing all of this — and they still say no,” she said. “That is frustrating.”
The ombudsman’s role within the EU is to uphold transparency norms and root out possible conflicts of interest, including between industry and the EU institutions. But its judgments are non-binding and at the mercy of those same institutions to implement them.
O’Reilly, who hails from Ireland and was the EU’s first female ombudsman, will be replaced by Teresa Anjinho, Portugal’s former justice minister. Anjinho was approved by the European Parliament in a majority vote.
