Excerpt from Emily O’Reilly’s keynote address to Georgetown University — Washington, 27 September 2022 — The assault on the United States Capitol in January 2021 was a brutal reminder of how quickly the pillars of democracies — even deeply rooted ones — can be put under pressure. …

Excerpt from Emily O’Reilly’s address at the Basque Country University — Bilbao, 16 March 2022 The world looks very different today to what it did just a few weeks ago. The unanticipated is now real, the unimaginable is no longer so. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has plunged us back to a time we thought consigned to history, as though we never truly believed that history…

Excerpt from Emily O’Reilly’s address to the Global Public Affairs Forum — Paris, 17 September 2021 — The European Ombudsman’s Office, created through the 1993 Maastricht Treaty, is an entity intended to increase the democratic accountability of the EU. We deal with complaints from the public, journalists, civil society, business and others against the EU administration and we carry out investigations on our own initiative.

Court of Justice of the European Union, Luxembourg — 13 February 2020 — I last addressed this gathering on a beautiful day in late September 2013 following my first election as European Ombudsman and I once again thank the European Parliament for its trust in me. On that autumn day I quoted the Irish poet Seamus Heaney and spoke of how I took…

On 15 January 2020, Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly presented to the European Parliament plenary the Annual Report 2018. The report was overwhelmingly voted in favour by Members of the Parliament on 16 January. — It is always a great pleasure to present the annual reports of my office to Parliament however, this year is particularly significant, as I am presenting our work to a new Parliament, with many new Members and which four weeks ago voted confidence in me and in that work by…

Address by Emily O’Reilly to Transparency International event— Brussels, 13 November 2019 — I would like to begin by congratulating the organisers for assembling such high-level and respected speakers from the three main EU institutions. I am particularly pleased to see Minister Tuppurainen here as the Council has not always been a frequent attender of such discussions. We all, I am sure, welcome…

Emily O’Reilly’s address to the Institute of International and European Affairs — Brussels, 11 November 2019 — The timing and theme of this evening’s event are very good given that today is Armistice Day in Europe and last weekend we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a key event in the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union and the democratisation of central…

Speech by European Ombudsman, Emily O’ Reilly, Brussels 27/06/2019 Our very first awards event was held two years ago and I remember it as an event of great warmth and great excitement, not just for the winners but for everyone in the room who gained an insight into some of…

European Ombudsman address — Annual Irish Speakers Series at the Central European University, Budapest, 7 May 2019 I want to share first a brief personal reflection, as an Irish woman, on my own attitude to the Union given the current focus on nationalism, nativism and particularly the claims that the…