EU 'cannot have political legitimacy without moral authority,' says European Ombudsman

As the European Union looks to restore trust in its institutions after last year's shocking corruption scandals, Euronews sat down with European Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly, who overviews transparency and ethics issues related to the EU, to discuss transparency, intelligence and what it all means for how we perceive Europe.

Sándor Zsiros, Euronews: Emily O'Reilly Thanks for being with us. Lately, we saw the biggest corruption scandal in the history of the European Union, MEPs and assistants were caught running with big money bags. Have you been surprised by this scandal?

Emily O'Reilly, EU Ombudsman: "Yes and no. I mean, the scandal itself is quite shocking and it is being played out in the Belgian courts, and all of that, we need to be mindful of that. But I suppose anybody watching it would have been quite shocked by it because the graphics were quite dramatic. We saw literally euro notes, we saw suitcases. So everybody [saw that] a sort of cartoon-like idea of corruption was served up to them. So that was quite dramatic. But I suppose when you look at the Parliament in the way that a lot of the rules and codes, that are supposed to protect parliament against corruption, even though there are a lot of them, they're not really enforced and monitored. So I suppose in a way this was a sort of a scandal or an accident waiting to happen."

Sándor Zsiros, Euronews: This organisation or this network has been running in the parliament for a quite long time. How is it possible that inside the EU, they have been not detected, but they have been detected only by the Belgian police?

Emily O'Reilly, EU Ombudsman: "My understanding is it was the intelligence services of another country that gave the information to the Belgian authorities.