The complainant, a pan-European civil society platform, raised concerns with how the European Commission prepared the 'Facilitation Package' of draft legislative proposals for countering migrant smuggling. In particular, the complainant argued that it was wrong for the Commission not to carry out an impact assessment before presenting the proposals.

Following an inquiry, the Ombudsman decided to issue joint findings in this case with two other cases. Those cases concerned similar issues in relation to proposals for amended EU rules on agriculture and on simplifying sustainability rules for businesses.

The Ombudsman found shortcomings in how the Commission prepared all these legislative proposals. In particular, she found the Commission had applied a particularly broad definition of ‘urgency’, failed to sufficiently justify invoking urgency to derogate from its internal decision-making rules, and failed to document its derogations from these rules. She also found it had not put in place a procedure to ensure the transparent, evidence-based, and inclusive preparation of ‘urgent’ legislative proposals and that it failed to keep records of climate consistency assessments.

The Ombudsman recommended the Commission formally define ‘urgent’ situations that justify a derogation from the rules and establish a procedure to ensure the urgent preparation of legislative proposals still complies with the principles of a transparent, evidence-based, and inclusive law-making process. To assist the Commission with this task, the Ombudsman made four suggestions, which include clarifying its stakeholder consultation rules for urgent proposals and ensuring that the evidence supporting its proposals is published in good time to enable public debate before new rules are adopted.