Brussels Briefing
While MEPs are campaigning for votes, one Irish woman is pushing ahead with her job — ombudsman Emily O’Reilly. She has seized her role with both hands and is busily expanding its weight, no longer waiting for complaints from citizens about being hard-done by the EU institutions.
She has undertaken investigations on her own initiative of the expert groups set up by the Commission to advise them on draft legislation, with a specific investigation into 14 “civil dialogue groups” to advise on agricultural policy. Many of these groups have been shown to be top heavy with business interests with barely a nod to civil society. This should also open up the lobbying area and the need for greater transparency on who is influencing whom an area which some MEPs might like to resist.
