‘Powerful consiglieri’ run von der Leyen’s Commission, EU transparency chief says

BRUSSELS — The EU ombudsman described a powerful unelected and untransparent culture at the top of the European Commission, laying the blame squarely at the feet of its president, Ursula von der Leyen.  

Emily O’Reilly, who’s served as the EU’s accountability and transparency watchdog for more than a decade, told POLITICO’s EU Confidential podcast that the Commission’s opacity has got worse over time.

O’Reilly, who leaves the post in February, said that over her 11-year tenure she didn’t once meet von der Leyen, and was “never at ease” with the “powerful consiglieri” who sit in the Commission president’s cabinet. “Consiglieri” is typically used in English as a term for advisers of a mafia boss.

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.  

O’Reilly hit out at the Parliament for not holding the Commission to account, urging the lawmaking body to remember its powerful oversight role.

“On several occasions, the MEPs asked me, how can we make the Commission more accountable? How can we get them to give us the documents we need? How can we get them to be open about this, that or the other? And I thought, they’re asking me?” she said.

“I’m the ombudsman, with 80 people … They are the institution that’s supposed to hold the Commission to account, so if they’re asking me for advice, I think that is concerning,” she added.

“If the Parliament starts to internalize this idea that it can’t exercise proper oversight over the Commission, that’s the way it’s going to go.”