Guten Abend und vielen Dank für die Einladung.

My special thanks go to MEP Marion Walsmann and Dr. Alexander von Preen for the opportunity to speak in this forum. It is particularly important for me to engage directly with European companies and business representatives.

The European Ombudsman is also good for business.

I was asked to speak about restoring trust in the EU, a topic that lies at the very heart of my work as head of the European Ombudsman. Which properly reflects the role of my Office as a bridge between Europeans — including businesses — and the EU administration.

Let me begin by briefly explaining what we do, because understanding our role helps clarify how companies can seek redress when things go wrong at EU level.

The European Ombudsman is an independent body tasked with ensuring good administration in the EU institutions, bodies, offices, and agencies.

When someone — an individual, an organisation, or a business — encounters a problem with the EU administration, they can submit a complaint to us. We examine the issue, seek a fair and balanced solution, and, where appropriate, make proposals to prevent similar problems in the future.

We do not only act reactively. In some cases, we launch own-initiative inquiries to proactively address systemic issues that risk undermining trust, fairness, or legal certainty. Broadly speaking, our limits can be summarised to three: the judicial function of the ECJ, the merits of legislative proposals submitted to the EP, and all decisions of political nature.

Importantly for today’s audience, our work is not limited to citizens. Businesses regularly come to us, particularly when dealing with EU contracts, public procurement, audits, or funding programmes.

Our interventions have helped companies correct procedural errors, secure timely payments, or challenge inaccurate or disproportionate recovery demands. While our recommendations are not legally binding, EU institutions follow them in most cases — and sometimes, the mere opening of an inquiry is enough to prompt corrective action.

Turning now to the broader question of restoring trust in the EU.

We often hear that mistrust is driven by economic uncertainty, geopolitical instability, foreign interference, or misinformation. All of these play a role.

But from my perspective, one issue stands out very clearly: our decision-making processes are increasingly struggling to keep pace with the speed and complexity of change — without losing legitimacy along the way.

We live in a time of permanent crisis management. In just a few years, we have experienced a global pandemic, the return of war to our continent, accelerating climate-related disasters, and the rapid erosion of long-standing international norms.

At the same time, technological developments — particularly artificial intelligence — are advancing faster than our regulatory frameworks, raising profound questions about privacy, safety, and employment.

For businesses, this environment translates into constant uncertainty: new trade barriers, disrupted supply chains, regulatory change, and growing pressure from unfair global competition.

Against this backdrop, EU policymaking is expanding into new areas and becoming more technical, more complex, and more urgent than ever.

All of this, in particular urgency, carries risks — particularly if it comes at the expense of transparency, stakeholder involvement, and predictability. Risks that go directly to the question of trust and, ultimately, legitimacy. At a time when the Union is asked to manage multiple overlapping crises, it needs a strong level of democratic legitimacy to succeed. Yet it is precisely the perception of fading legitimacy that can deepen and prolong these crises.

Seen from the perspective of the European Ombudsman, these abstract challenges take on a very concrete form. The complaints we receive show how urgency, complexity, and crisis-driven decision-making are experienced by citizens and businesses alike, and they reveal where trust, legitimacy, and good administration begin to fray.

Let me illustrate this with an example. One of the EU’s responses to geopolitical and economic pressure has been a renewed push for regulatory simplification — with the aim of boosting competitiveness, innovation, and growth.

This is an objective that it is hard to contest. Simplification can reduce burdens and improve compliance.

But, as you know, my Office received several complaints concerning the fast-tracking of legislative proposals by the European Commission. Allow me to refer specifically to the Common Agricultural Policy changes, new rules on migrant smuggling, and — most relevant for today — the Omnibus package simplifying sustainability requirements for businesses.

An important clarification: in all these inquiries, we did not examine the substance of the policy choices. That is not our role. What we examined was how decisions were made — whether the Commission complied with its own Better Regulation rules.

And there, we found serious procedural shortcomings. Most notably, we found that the Commission failed to sufficiently justify the urgency of its legislative proposals to the public and to document its derogations from the Better Regulation rules.

Declaring a proposal “urgent” is not a neutral technical step. It has real consequences. It can exclude stakeholders — including SMEs and retailers — from the legislative process and weaken the evidence base of new rules.

I fully recognise that there are situations where swift action is necessary. But speed must not come at the expense of minimum procedural standards, because those standards are what ultimately guarantee predictability and trust. A better balance must be achieved.

When stakeholders are not meaningfully involved, the consequences are long-term.

First, it feeds the perception that EU law-making is remote, technocratic, or driven only by those with the loudest voices or the deepest pockets.

Second, it undermines compliance. Businesses are far more likely to respect and invest in rules they believe were developed through a fair, transparent, and inclusive process — even when those rules are demanding, or they do not agree with them.

And third, it creates winners and losers by accident.

Some companies invested heavily to comply with existing sustainability rules — buying software, hiring experts, restructuring supply chains — in the expectation that everyone would eventually play by the same rules.

Sudden regulatory reversals risk creating a sense of unfairness, discouraging early compliance in the future and introducing precisely the uncertainty that simplification is meant to reduce.

For these reasons, I recommended that the Commission clearly define and clearly communicate what constitutes “urgency”, properly document any derogations from Better Regulation rules, and establish procedures ensuring that even fast-tracked legislation remains transparent, evidence-based, and inclusive.

This is not bureaucracy for its own sake. It is about predictability, enforcement, and trust — the foundations of a secure legal framework for business.

We can be certain that further regulatory change is coming. In an increasingly severe storm, reinforcing the ship is not only sensible, it is necessary. But how we reinforce it matters.

If we want to restore trust in EU politics — and if we want an EU that supports competitive, innovative, and responsible businesses — we must balance urgency with inclusivity, and efficiency with democratic deliberation.

Shortcuts may at times be unavoidable. But when they weaken participatory democracy, they also weaken legitimacy. What may appear as a short-term gain can quickly turn into a long-term loss for citizens and businesses alike, undermining the solid pillars of this European project, upon which prosperity and sustainable development ultimately depend.

Thank you very much for your attention.