Emily O'Reilly on the rise of the right and her election fears
Emily O’Reilly: 'Elections will be important. But of course, a lot of people use them as a way of giving their governments a bit of a kicking on issues that have nothing to do with the EU or nothing to do with the European Parliament.'
Emily O’Reilly is not one for predictions, and who could blame her?
The Dubliner, who has been the European Ombudsman since July 2013, says that if last year is anything to go by, she would prefer to stay away from predictions.
“Who would have predicted covid?” she asks over the phone from her offices in the European Parliament's buildings in Strasbourg, on France’s eastern border with Germany.
“Who would have predicted the possible comeback of Trump?
“Who would have predicted Russia going full frontal into Ukraine?
“All of these crises, so many of these crises in Europe and globally, were not predicted.
“So I'm not going to start doing any predictions now. It really is just wait and see."
While she may not be keen on making predictions, she is fearful about the shape of things to come across Europe.
“I think the European Parliament elections [in June] will tell a lot in relation to the mood of political direction in Europe generally," she says. "There is a lot of turbulence out there and you'd have to wonder where the whole Israel issue is going to go.”
Chief among her fears is a proverbial ‘race to the bottom’ and the unedifying spectacle of mainstream parties adopting the policies of the far right in a bid to stifle their electoral chances.
“The big question is: how successful are the more right-wing parties across Europe going to be?" says Ms O'Reilly.
“How successful are they going to be with the normal, up to now, balance between social democrats and EPP and people to the left and right of them? Is that going to be maintained, or is it going to be slanted more towards the right, and what will that mean?
She says an issue that has emerged in recent years is “the tendency of parties to, in order to send off the right, become a little more right wing themselves”.
She cites French president Emmanuel Macron’s decision to appoint Gabriel Attal as prime minister as an example.
“The narrative around that is that he's being seen as very strong on certain issues, for example, the wearing of certain clothing by Muslim girls in schools and so on,” she said.
“His appointment helped to see off the rise of another young politician, in Marine Le Pen's party. So again, you have this sort of tendency of parties to go a little bit more right wing themselves in order to fend off the real right-wingers.
“It's a bit of a cliche, but people say: ‘Well, why go for the fake when you can actually have the real thing?’, so it doesn't always work out that way.”
She gives as an example what happened when the former British prime minister David Cameron tried to “appease” arch Brexit advocate Nigel Farage in 2016.
Once seeing his party UKIP denounced by the rival Conservative Party as "little Englanders" and "cranks and political gadflies", it was Farage who ended up forcing Cameron to call the referendum.
Despite vociferous campaigning to stay in a “reformed” Europe, Cameron resigned in June 2016 after he lost the referendum on whether or not the UK should stay in Europe.
He had maintained, in what turned out to be a deeply divisive poll, that Brexit would be a disastrous act of “economic self-harm”.
Mr Farage, on the other hand, saw Brexit as a decision by an increasingly disillusioned electorate to “stick two fingers up” to mainstream politicians.
Ms O’Reilly said: “The politics are complicated and we'll have to wait and see what plays out in the European Parliament. Elections will be important. But of course, a lot of people use them as a way of giving their governments a bit of a kicking on issues that have nothing to do with the EU or nothing to do with the European Parliament."
When asked what is her biggest fear for the coming year, it is the rise of authoritarianism in different parts of Europe.
“The history of Europe — and other countries — has been around the rise of powerful, charismatic men, you know, who are able to seduce the population into a form of magical thinking,” she says.
“There are people who want to be seduced by that, who want to be told fairy stories, who want to hear that. Their problems can be solved and suddenly they rally around this individual and it works for a lot of them.
“Therefore, if you're a politician looking for votes, there must be a temptation to play that playbook, but it has to be resisted, because it never ends well.
“It didn't end well for Cameron when he, so afraid of Farage, agreed to the referendum.”
The jostling among mainstream parties to appear more right wing to bolster their electoral prospects is a far cry from the revulsion and shock expressed after the rise of far-right leaders such as Jörg Haider in Austria, and Jean-Marie Le Pen in France.
An outcry among other nations and a diplomatic backlash followed the elevation of Haider’s far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) as a coalition partner after it won 27% of the vote in the country’s 1999 elections.
A group of some 14 EU countries made clear their disgust that a party set up by a group of former Austrian Nazis in 1965 and led by a man whose parents were early members of the Austrian Nazi Party could hold power.
That it was admitted as a coalition partner with the Austrian People’s Party (OVP) was attacked as a move that “legitimises the extreme right in Europe”, the EU said at the time.
A diplomatic boycott of Austria was threatened, and sanctions were introduced among other measures which led to Haider giving up his chances of becoming the country’s chancellor.
He later stepped down as the FPO’s chairman.
A few years later, riots and demonstrations greeted Jean-Marie Le Pen’s attempt to win the presidency of France in 2002. The protests increased when, in April that year, the far-right National Front candidate made the presidential run-off after the then French prime minister Lionel Jospin was eliminated.
That shock result led Jacques Chirac, who would go on to win 82.2% of the vote in the second round, to refuse to take part in a televised debate against Le Pen.
He told a rally at the time: "Faced with intolerance and hatred, no debate is possible”.
Ms O'Reilly sees the role she and other EU chiefs play as being essential to the very heart of the EU is about.
“I often say that our job is to keep the good guys good,” she says. Therefore, you can see how institutions and individual politicians might be seeing the playbook of the right wing played out successfully again and again.
“[There is a] temptation to go with it, in order to basically maintain [their] base," she says. "I think that is the biggest fear — that things will tilt right in order to fend off the threat from the right wing.
“But then, that has never been seen to work. I mean, even in the Netherlands, the politician Dilan Yesilgöz — who was tipped at one point to be successful — she ran quite a right-wing campaign in relation to migration, but of course, the other guy [Geert Wilders] ran an even more right-wing campaign and guess who won?”
When asked if she thinks there could be a race to the bottom, she barely hesitates.
“Yeah, absolutely — that is a good way of putting it,” she says with a weary sigh.
“I'm sure that President Macron might not sort of frame it in this way, but the new prime minister has a reputation for sort of beating the right wing at their own game, that that's why he's there — in order to fend off Marine LePen and her protege [Jordan Bardella] who is even younger than the new French prime minister.
“And that's a bit disturbing as well and of course, then that has implications for the way migrants are treated.
“When you read more widely about migration, it is essentially weaponised by certain right-wing leaders in order to, you know, frighten people.”
A case that is very close to her heart is the death of 600 migrants who perished after the Adriana fishing vessel sank off the coast of Greece last June.
Their shocking deaths added to the ever-growing toll of more than 20,000 migrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean since 2000.
Distress calls were made repeatedly for help many hours before the ship sank.
Ms O’Reilly is at the helm of an inquiry into the precise role played by the EU’s own border control agency Frontex.
She has said that while migration to Europe will continue, it is up to the EU to “ensure that it acts in a way that maintains fundamental rights”.
It has been reported that Frontex alerted the Greek authorities to the ship’s presence and offered assistance, but Ms O’Reilly wants to find out “what else it could or should have done”.
Her inquiry will look “for greater clarity” in relation to Frontex’s role in search and rescue operations.
She says: “The case that is that I'm most occupied with now is the Fontex case, and the case of the Adrianna.
“[This is] not just in relation to one agency of the EU, but as a way of clarifying and illuminating for myself — as much as for the citizens of Europe — just how something like this could happen.
“This is important to me because I'm a great fan, a huge fan, of the EU, and I see it as a great force for good in the world, and it was founded on the ashes of Auschwitz.
“I know there was an economic story as well but it took its fundamental values from the atrocities of the Second World War, and particularly the Holocaust.
“It brands itself on those values around the world, and I can understand all the issues with migration.
“Of course I get all the complexities and all of that and how it's weaponised as well by countries outside of the EU.
“But at the same time, if we are to hold to those values and use them as our brand, then they have to be meaningful in everything that we do. That includes the way in which we deal with migrant crossings and the possibilities we have of saving people.
“At the very least we need to be honest about what happens and why it happens. So, if I can do that, then I think I would have done something worthwhile.
“I'm not saying it's going to change anything. But at least it will explain to people who simply could not believe how something like that — one of the greatest maritime disasters in recent years — could happen and, as one commentator, said: 'And people shrugged'.”
The commentator she referenced was Richard Pérez-Peña, whose June 23, 2023, piece for after the Adrianna sank was headlined '5 Deaths at Sea Gripped the World. Hundreds of Others Got a Shrug'. His own piece was contrasting the international effort to search for the OceanGate Expeditions submersible Titan after its five occupants lost contact on their way down to view the wreck of the Titanic.
A passionate believer in the European Union, Ms O’Reilly attributes much of her “independence” as a woman to the EU, not Ireland.
She said: “I do regard the European Union as a great force for good in the world generally.
“I've always had a positive view of it. As a woman who grew up in the 1970s, it was the European Union that granted me my independence as an Irish woman, and not my own government.
“So I've always had a very strong sense of the good that the EU can spread in the world, and not just within the EU.”
The married mother-of-five was first elected as the European Ombudsman in July 2013.
Following the European Parliament elections, she was re-elected for five years in December 2014 and again in December 2019.
As the European Ombudsman she investigates maladministration in the institutions and bodies of the European Union.
In 2016, Ms O’Reilly featured on ’s list of women who shape Brussels, the EU’s administrative centre.
No stranger to awards, she counts the Schwarzkopf Europe Award in 2017, the Prague European Summit Vision for Europe Award in 2018, and the University of Flensburg ‘Europa prize’ in 2020 among many others.
In the course of a successful journalistic career in Ireland, for example, she won two awards: Woman Journalist of the Year in 1986 and Journalist of the Year in 1994.
Before taking the hot seat in Strasbourg, she was the first female Ombudsman and Information Commissioner in Ireland from 2003 until 2013.
With a background in journalism, it is no surprise to learn that a lack of communication on the part of governments and their departments is at the core of most of the complaints she has handled.
She is all too aware that there have been repeated objections raised over the years by communities around Ireland about the lack of communication in advance of refugees arriving.
Despite these calls for greater communication between the Government departments involved and local communities, the lack of communication remains an issue for many.
Ms O’Reilly says that in her 20 or so years experience as one ombudsman or another, the vast majority of complaints have been around communication.
The issue is, she says, “at the heart” of complaints.
“Communication is absolutely vital to everything,” she says.
“If a community is going to be asked to host new people — for the sake of the community, but also for the sake of the new people — there has to be some sort of conversation.
Despite her reluctance to predict the future, there is one prediction she allows herself.
Alluding to a famous quote attributed to former British prime minister Harold McMillan in the early 1960s when asked what his greatest challenges were, she adds: “After the elections, everything will change by the week, things will happen. Events — dear boy — will happen, so we don't know.
"But it will certainly be an interesting year, that's for sure.”
