The complainant, a company that submitted a proposal under the Horizon Europe EIC Accelerator programme, raised concerns about how the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) had evaluated its proposal. Among other things, they were concerned that the external experts evaluating its proposal for EISMEA had used third-party artificial intelligence (AI) systems in a manner that had made the evaluation unfair. The complainant also argued that clearer rules should be established governing the use of AI systems by project evaluators.

The Ombudsman did not find grounds to open an inquiry into how EISMEA had evaluated the complainant’s proposal because the agency provided clear and reasonable explanations in this regard. She did however open an inquiry into the rules governing evaluators’ use of AI systems in the context of EU programmes implemented by EISMEA as well as into how transparent the agency is about this use of AI. Since the European Commission adopted some of the existing rules on this issue, the Ombudsman decided to open the inquiry against both EISMEA and the Commission.

As a first step, the Ombudsman set out a series of questions to both bodies and sought to organise a meeting with them. She also sought to inspect certain documents held by the Commission and EISMEA regarding the use of AI by external experts advising them in similar cases.