News

Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly has welcomed steps taken by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) to improve the transparency of its work.

Following the Ombudsman’s suggestions, the ECDC put in place measures to make it easier for the public to follow the evolution of its scientific advice and to see the data underlying its scientific assessments. It also committed to more transparency around its exchanges with international partners, such as the World Health Organisation.

The European Defence Agency (EDA) should have forbidden its former Chief Executive from becoming a strategic advisor at Airbus on conflict of interest grounds, the Ombudsman has concluded.

The Ombudsman’s own-initiative inquiry looked into the EDA’s decision to approve the former Chief Executive’s application to be head of public affairs of Airbus Spain and strategic advisor for Airbus Defence and Space. The former Chief Executive left the EDA in January 2020 and started at Airbus in August of the same year.

The Ombudsman has asked the Commission to provide details on how it ensures respect for human rights in the international trade agreements it signs. Concretely, the Ombudsman wants to examine how the Commission prepares the ‘human rights clauses’ in the agreements and how it monitors their implementation. The Ombudsman is asking for responses to a series of questions, including on whether there is...

The Ombudsman has written to several EU institutions and agencies to ask what measures they have in place for documenting work-related text and instant messages.

In a letter to the Commission, Council, Parliament, European Chemicals Agency, European Food Safety Authority, European Medicines Agency, Frontex and the European Central Bank, the Ombudsman noted that any decision to record information in the administration’s document management system should be dependent on its content and not on its format.

The European Ombudsman has opened an inquiry into how the European Investment Bank (EIB) handled the request by a former Vice-President and Management Committee member to take up a post at Spanish company Iberdrola that had received loans from the bank.

The ceremony to announce the winner of the European Ombudsman Award for Good Administration 2021 will take place at 10:00 CET on 24 June. It will be livestreamed on the Award event page as well as on Twitter and YouTube. The keynote speech will be delivered by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. In addition to the overall award, there will be awards in four categories: Excellence i...

The Ombudsman has made a series of suggestions to Frontex to improve the accountability of its operations and to ensure that people know there is a complaints mechanism they can use if their fundamental rights have been breached.

The suggestions follow a six-month own initiative inquiry assessing how Frontex has implemented new rules - in force since November 2019 - on its complaints mechanism and the Fundamental Rights Officer.

The Ombudsman has set out preliminary findings to the European Investment Bank (EIB) in the context of three ongoing related inquiries into the transparency of environmental information about EIB-financed projects. The preliminary findings include suggestions to the EIB on a series of measures it could take to improve transparency.

European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly has launched a wide-ranging inquiry into how the Commission handles so-called ‘revolving doors’ cases among its staff. The inquiry is part of a reinforced monitoring of how the EU administration implements the ethics obligations on EU staff who move to the private sector. Read here the press release.

The European Ombudsman has launched her Annual Report for 2020. As in past years, complaints related to transparency and accountability accounted for the biggest proportion of inquiries (25%). The Report documents the Ombudsman’s proactive monitoring of how key EU institutions responded in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. The Ombudsman found that the European Centre for Disease Control has insu...