Dear members of the General Assembly,

Many thanks for the invitation to speak to you today and to share my thoughts on the transparency of EU decision-making, a topic of ever-increasing importance with the expanding reach of the EU in areas such as defence and anticipated and significant changes in industrial, trade, energy and other policies most recently highlighted in the Mario Draghi report.

The speed of change is rapid and it’s important to ensure that citizens and relevant stakeholders can - despite the speed - know what’s happening, why it’s happening and who and what is influencing decision-making.

But before I do that, I want to acknowledge the revisions you have made to strengthen the code of conduct for your members. Even small steps need drive and determination to generate the necessary momentum leaving aside the challenging matter of implementation and enforcement that remains ahead.

I understand that much of the drive and determination in this case has come from your outgoing President Paul Varakas so very well done Paul.

I want to note one particular addition to the code of conduct and that is the appointment of independent members to the new ‘disciplinary committee’ that will receive complaints about breaches of the code.

I welcome it because of the reluctance to date to introduce similar independent experts in the context of the EU’s ethics framework. A proposal for example to introduce such experts into the European Parliament’s relevant ethics body was rejected.  Similarly, the Commission’s ethics body is restrictive in terms of outside expertise and independence of action.

Yet a key principle of any system of governance is that ethical judgement, indeed any kind of judgement, is improved by the inclusion of independent experts.

Their oversight and input help to make better decisions, unaffected by the normal human inclination of ‘insiders’ to put at times self-interest before that of the public.

Self-regulation is not a system capable of enjoying full public trust.  The concern that the self-regulators will focus too much on ‘self’ and not enough on ‘regulate’ is a valid one. Yet despite the drama of the Qatargate scandal that engulfed the European Parliament for a period – and despite the subsequent reforms - the EU’s ethics framework still reflexively, culturally, keeps the crucial issue of consequences and sanctions inside the house, or at least among a small circle of, essentially, insiders.

The EU institutions has many regulations, decisions, codes and other legal texts, but the committees who police them are usually sitting members or former members of the institutions. This is particularly the case in relation to the European Parliament, but even where experts are drawn from the ranks of senior officials outside of the institutions, as in the case of the European Commission’s independent ethical committee, its powers are carefully limited. The question of whether and how much to sanction is left exclusively to the institution’s President. This raises questions about what happens when it is the President’s own actions that are being scrutinised . This is not a hypothetical scenario.

In recent years, the heads of both the Parliament and the Commission have been accused of what on the face of it are breaches of their own ethical rules. One concerned the late registration of gifts, the other a video message during a member state election.

Even if those alleged breaches are relatively minor in comparison to the actions of others, this situation in my view has not prompted sufficient self-reflection on the adequacy of the current ethics framework.

The new inter-institutional ethics body is unlikely - at this early stage of its development at least - to remedy this situation. While the presence of five independent experts on this body will  help it to fulfil its primary function of agreeing on the highest possible common ethical standards for the participating institutions, they will not have a role in settling individual cases, unless these cases are referred to them by the relevant institution.

So after Qatargate, Dalligate, Cash for Amendments, Uberfiles and many, many other ethical scandals, self-regulation remains resolutely in place. In my view, this neither serves the public interest or the public mood, but I am glad that other stakeholders, such as SEAP, are willing to go further.

I am also pleased to see that the relevant sections of the code that relate to members’ obligations to uphold the institutions’ revolving door restrictions have also been strengthened. The explicit prohibition on offering employment to officials when they are still in post will help with the perception, at least, that lucrative careers in the private sector are part of a quid pro quo for access and preferential treatment.

 The code is clear that your members can “only employ former personnel of EU institutions... subject to the published rules and confidentiality requirements of those institutions”. This underlines the role that all bodies and organisations have, not only the institutions, in the governance of the EU’s ethical framework. Building a more ethical culture in Brussels, Strasbourg and elsewhere is a collective responsibility. This is particularly true of the revolving door phenomenon, which necessarily crosses sectors, codes and legal frameworks.

Throughout my time in Office, I have dealt multiple times with complaints and investigations concerning the management of conflicts of interest that may arise when officials go through that door into companies that often they have previously regulated.

This area of work highlights the usefulness of Ombudsman own-initiative powers, as the issue is systemic and difficult for the wider public to monitor. When cases do find themselves subject to widespread public scrutiny the damage to the institutions’ reputation is done.

Following a series of inquiries into how the Commission in particular manages these conflicts, the most recent being an assessment of 100 files that we published last year, one issue in particular remains unresolved.

The sticking point appears to be whether the Commission can credibly monitor the restrictions it places on officials once they’ve joined a company, consultancy or, less frequently, an NGO.

 In my view, where the Commission cannot credibly monitor these restrictions, such as those on contacting former networks in the institutions or providing confidential information, it should simply forbid the official from taking up the post, especially in those situations where the risks to the reputation and integrity of the institution are gravest.

The Commission is reluctant to accept our recommendation, and when we suggested that they could give legal force to the restrictions by including them in the new employment contracts, they rejected this, claiming they had no right to interfere in these contractual arrangements.

There has been some movement nonetheless, which I will share with you. I note that in our recent inquiry into this issue, in response to questions we asked about the move of a senior DG Competition official to a major US anti-trust law firm, the Commission said that former officials will be obliged to let it be known that there are restrictions in place when announcing such moves. The Commission’s clear  preference is for small incremental increases  in transparency when in my view  a much more forceful and decisive approach is required.

It strikes me that if we see this problem as one of multi-stakeholder governance, then ethically minded  professional bodies such as SEAP can help the Commission. Could we imagine such a body committing to ensuring that its members would include the Commission restrictions in any employment contract with former officials? That they would publish the names of any such officials, along with the restrictions, on a prominent location on members’ web-sites? That they would disseminate this information widely in their organisation, along with guidance about what employees can and cannot ask of their new colleague?

If such measures were promoted and, crucially, enforced by responsible bodies such as SEAP then the public might just have more confidence that the restrictions imposed by the Commission, and the ethics regime more generally, is more than meaningless box ticking.

These are reflections for the next revision of the code of conduct perhaps. Paul will be glad I’m sure that this is a task that will be left to his successor.

Before I finish I want to mention another recent Ombudsman decision. The removal of the names of lower-level officials from the Commission’s EU Who is Who website has concerned both civil society and corporate  lobbyists. While we recognise there are very strongly held views on all sides there are two aspects of this case that are concerning.

The first is that current levels of transparency are not a given and that we may see further efforts to restrict public disclosures in future. The second lies at the heart of our inquiry, which challenged the way in which the Commission decision was made. Perhaps more concerning is that the Commission refused to run the decision-making process in a more considered manner. This is concerning because a truly open, accessible, responsive and accountable administration needs to be fully accountable in its decision-making.

It’s important for all of us that the attitude displayed in this case, does not become more widespread and that the EU administration - exemplary in so many ways - remembers that they are public servants, responsible and accountable to us and not simply to itself.

Once again, monitoring and responding to this trend is something that falls to my successor, and perhaps to Paul’s. But it will remain a concern to all of us as members of a political community who rely on the promise of the EU’s t founding treaty, that “decisions shall be taken as openly and as closely as possible to the citizen.”

Thank you for your attention and I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.