Who will be the EU bureaucrats’ next watchdog?

Two Italians, a Portuguese, an Estonian, a Dutchman and an Austro-German are jostling to be the next European Ombudsman, as Ireland’s Emily O’Reilly prepares to step down.  

They’ll face a gruelling process to gain support from Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in a series of secret ballots set to take place in December. 

They’ll also have to resolve a longstanding squabble over the exact duties of the post, which is in principle responsible for probing maladministration in EU institutions, and whose forays further afield have sometimes stoked controversy.  

O’Reilly’s brief takes her from personnel issues to fundamental rights, and she’s not shied away from high-profile cases, for example urging greater transparency over how European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen might have intervened in Covid vaccine contracts. 

In 2018, she found four instances of maladministration in the appointment of Martin Selmayr to the post of Commission Secretary General, after which MEPs called on him to resign from the most senior official post in the EU executive. 

But her focus was not just on high politics: “We never lost sight of individual, very human problems,” she said at an event in September to mark her departure.  

“Earlier this year, and in possibly my favourite case, we managed to get a parliament pass for the baby of a breastfeeding contract interpreter,” O’Reilly said, adding: “I was very proud of that.” 

It’s that practical focus that some of her would-be replacements are hoping to emulate.  

“When I was an academic, I was very much focussed on ideas and the importance of concepts,” Teresa Anjinho, a former lecturer in law and human rights who subsequently served as justice minister and, since 2017, as deputy ombudsman for Portugal, told Euronews.  

“Then you realise what we all know: that the concepts without the practice, of course, they’re empty … sometimes policies do not have the effect that you intend them to have,” Anjinho said. 

Credibility and reputation

O’Reilly, who was a journalist, author and Irish Ombudsman until taking on the EU role in 2013, has occasionally been accused of stepping outside of her lane. 

In 2019, as she sought re-election, some campaigned against her broader approach – including Estonian Supreme Court Judge Julia Laffranque, who is standing again this year.  

“Law is at the foundation of the Ombudsman’s work,” Laffranque wrote in a 2019 article, saying that repeated complaints about O’Reilly’s approach had undermined the office’s credibility and reputation. 

“Ombudsmen must be able to exercise their mandate in a way that robustly resists criticism from both the substantive and procedural perspectives,” raising the chances that EU institutions will accept formal recommendations, Laffranque added. 

Anjinho appears to disagree, saying that ombudsmen should look beyond the law.  

“One of the things that makes an ombudsman office so unique is to be able to focus on fairness …  It’s absolutely different from a pure legalistic view of such an office,” Anjinho said.  

“Not everything that is in the law is fair and not everything that is fair is, of course, in the law.”

Looking beyond the law

But Laffranque isn’t the only one who seems to favour a narrower mandate.  

“I would work within the boundaries of the current legal framework while advocating for necessary reforms through appropriate channels,” Marino Fardelli, a former regional councillor who’s now ombudsman for Lazio, Italy, told Euronews in a written interview. 

“The office should focus on resolving complaints and ensuring transparency while being open to exploring areas where the mandate might need to be updated to address contemporary challenges,” Fardelli added. 

To be nominated, candidates have had to gain support from at least 39 of the 720 MEPs. 

Six have done so: including Dutch national Ombudsman Reinier van Zutphen, Claudia Mahler, an independent expert on the rights of older people at the United Nations, and Emilio de Capitani, a former staffer from the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee who’s brought a number of court cases to force greater transparency in EU legislative decisions. 

In practice each candidates’ support is currently concentrated in their home member states – a base they’ll now have to extend further.  

“The challenge for the candidates is to construct a narrative that doesn’t alienate a potential majority,” O’Reilly said at the September event.  

She recalled meeting the political group of Brexit mastermind and then-MEP Nigel Farage when she was chasing votes in 2013, and says her campaign advised her “to make sure that they like me and therefore vote for me, but not to make them like me so much that they would tweet their approval of me and annoy everybody else”. 

That may send a warning to Laffranque, whose current declared supporters include around a dozen from the Parliament’s far-right Patriots and sovereigntist groups, including France’s National Rally and Germany’s AfD. 

De Captani’s signatories are almost exclusively from the Parliament’s leftist, green and socialist groups; 34 of Fardelli’s 49 supporters, meanwhile, are from the right-wing Conservatives and Reformists grouping of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.  

“It is just logic that candidates are looking for support from their fellow citizens,” Fardelli told Euronews – adding that he hopes his track record and commitment to integrity will resonate across the political spectrum.  

“I am not a candidate of one group or another. I am an Italian candidate. And I believe that it is time for the south of Europe to have more responsibility at European level,” he added.  

It’s hard to say who’s the most favoured — most MEPs’ minds are currently on an intense November programme of hearings to confirm the 27 members of the European Commission, and haven’t yet taken a view on an issue seen as less urgent.  

Multiple candidates will be in Strasbourg next week to press their case – and they have a long road ahead of them.