Ms Emily O'Reilly:

I thank the Chairman for his warm welcome. I thank the committee for the opportunity to discuss my work during and in the context of the Covid-19 crisis. Members do not need me to tell them how challenging this past year has been for everyone. Those challenges are set to continue for much of 2021 despite the miracle arrival of vaccines developed and authorised with unprecedented speed. As national politicians, members have had the unenviable task of monitoring life-or-death decisions made by the Government and the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, with no comparable situation in recent memory to guide them. The balancing of risks and needs has had to be done with little time fully to reflect on outcomes and consequences both short and long term. I wish members well as they continue that arduous task while also striving to keep themselves and their families safe.

Covid-19 continues to have devastating consequences across Europe and the world and continues to monopolise the attention of governments and public administrations, as well as the societies they serve. Shortly after the World Health Organization, WHO, declared Europe to be the epicentre of the pandemic, it was obvious that this virus, which has no respect for borders, would be a major challenge for the EU. For my office, as the watchdog of the EU administration, it was clear that a transnational crisis of this scale would severely test the capacity of the EU institutions, and I began to monitor their response early on, using my powers of own-initiative investigation. In addition, I also began to receive complaints related to the pandemic and to the EU’s response to it.

In April last year, I wrote to the Presidents of the European Commission and the European Council with proposals on how to maintain high transparency standards during the crisis, and especially in the context of emergency or accelerated decision-making procedures and derogations from standard rules on meetings.

I made the point that during such a major crisis it is even more important that public authorities are open about how they operate and take decisions. Transparency helps to ensure public trust in, and reinforces the legitimacy of, decision-making processes.

I am sure members are all acutely aware of how during this terrifying time people will constantly seek assurance about what the Government is doing and whether they are being given all the facts necessary to make decisions about their lives and the lives of their families. Any sign that facts are being hidden, provokes not just distrust but also increased mental stress.

I received encouraging replies from both institutions that they would indeed prioritise transparency. However, as the crisis evolved, I considered it important to look in greater detail at some more specific aspects of the EU response and the roles of particular institutions and agencies. In July, I launched a series of inquiries and initiatives to this end. One of those concerned the work carried out by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, ECDC, in gathering and assessing data linked to the pandemic. As members are likely aware, the ECDC was set up in 2004 in the aftermath of the SARS outbreaks, essentially to help to co-ordinate the EU response to a future and more serious epidemic. Approximately 30 people in Europe were infected by SARS, a tiny number compared to Covid-19, which may have led to a certain complacency in relation to the necessary powers to be granted to this new agency. Making it work was not helped, of course, by the fact that the member states retain power over health policy and not the EU. While the ECDC was gifted a flattering title and lofty ambition, it was not given complementary powers, emerging rather as a weak agency with little independence of action. It can request health and other data from the member states, but there is no legal obligation on them to supply it.

My inquiry highlighted shortcomings in how the data is communicated to and gathered by the ECDC, both in terms of timing and completeness, and how the centre presents this information to the outside world. I raised issues, for example, vis-a-vis changing advice on the wearing of face masks and why certain surveys of member state capacity to deal with the crisis were published and others were not. I made a series of suggestions aimed at promoting greater transparency and better means to enable greater scrutiny of the data and assessments compiled by the ECDC. Ultimately, however, if the EU wants an agency that can live up to the title of pan-European disease prevention and control, EU legislators will need to reflect on the centre's founding mandate. Without specific new powers to ensure the completeness and quality of the data it receives from national authorities, it cannot effectively fulfil this role. It remains to be seen how the proposal from the Commission in this regard will develop.

The second inquiry I opened concerned the Council of the European Union and the transparency of its decision-making. My inquiry assessed the decision by the Council to derogate temporarily from its rules of procedure during the crisis and the implications this has had for its decision-making process and the transparency of that process. As members may also be aware, the Council shifted to meeting by videoconference and to taking all decisions by written procedure. My inquiry found that there was a considerable lack of transparency in how the Council made this fundamental shift to its way of operating. While the meetings of preparatory bodies in the Council are now more accessible to the public, there are still areas in which the Council should improve and I concluded this inquiry just last week with some suggestions.

In addition to those inquiries, I also engaged with the European Medicines Agency, EMA, the Commission and the European Investment Bank, EIB, about their roles. I also received a number of complaints related to the transparency of the negotiations for the vaccine procurement scheme, as well as public access to the so-called advance purchase agreements - the contracts that have been subject of so much debate, as member are well aware. While my inquiries into the requests for public access to the contracts were under way in the form of freedom of information requests, the Commission decided to publish most of these contracts. As is often the case, it belatedly realised that transparency was not just in the public interest, but in its own interest.

Another recent inquiry concerned a request that the Commission disclose details about the negotiating team in charge of the vaccine contracts. Given the blame game around vaccine procurement and roll-out, I consider that it is in the Commission's interest to provide greater transparency about the negotiations, including this team, since it is made up predominantly of representatives of national authorities in the member states. EU citizens need to know the extent to which their governments are involved in the contract deals and that the work is not solely carried out by the Commission.

I hope that my opening statement has provided members with some insight into my work in the context of the Covid-19 crisis. In the case of Covid-19, it is clear that there is a negative perception of how the EU has responded to the crisis to date. While the institutions were undoubtedly unprepared for dealing with a health crisis on this scale, it is possibly too easy to blame Brussels without acknowledging that often the real decision-makers reside in the national capitals and not in the so-called Brussels bubble. The crisis has cast a spotlight on decision-making at EU level and may, in time, influence the future direction of the Union itself as the debate over what should best be done at national level, and what could better be done at Union level, continues with the Covid-19 backdrop as a guide. As I noted earlier, the EU has no real competence in the area of health policy, which made it very difficult for the institutions to play any role in co-ordinating a response, something my inquiry into the ECDC laid bare.

The joint procurement scheme for vaccines was not without flaws, as we know. However, it was a first of its kind, with the Commission constrained by the demands of member states concerning which vaccines they wanted and at what price. The negotiating team was clearly also a joint effort, with national administrations having been active members. I expect there to be more twists and turns before we finally emerge from this crisis and, as ombudsman, I will likely deal with more complaints. However, my overriding message to the institutions will remain that conducting their tasks in as transparent a manner as possible is both in the public interest and, as the Commission found out vis-a-vis the vaccine contracts, also very much in its interests.

I look forward to our discussion. Thank you all for listening. Go raibh maith agaibh.