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The European Commission’s decision to open up sustainability, agriculture, and migration laws to legislative changes in response to external lobbying amounted to maladministration, falling short on standards of evidence-based and transparent decision-making, according to findings issued by the EU Ombudsman on Thursday.
The verdict affects a raft of changes the EU executive deemed necessary following a political backlash from the European Parliament and intense pressure from businesses and several governments.
The findings of the EU Ombudsman, the bloc’s corporate watchdog, came a few days before the Commission is due to present yet another “simplification package” streamlining environmental laws.
“The Commission needs to ensure that accountability and transparency continue to be part of its legislative processes and that its actions are clearly explained to citizens,” said EU Ombudsman Teresa Anjinho.
The US was among the strongest opponents of the EU’s corporate due diligence law and corporate sustainability reporting requirements, claiming that the laws were unfair to trade relations and that it would be too burdensome to expect businesses to prove that their products hadn’t harmed the environment or breached human rights.
Rushed decision
The EU Ombudsman began investigating the case after eight civil society organisations raised concerns about malpractice, claiming that the Commission had failed to carry out a prior impact assessment, including a climate consistency assessment and a public consultation, before proposing the simplification laws.
ClientEarth, Anti-Slavery International, the Clean Clothes Campaign, the European Coalition for Corporate Justice, Friends of the Earth Europe, Global Witness, Notre Affaire À Tous, and the campaign group Transport & Environment submitted a formal complaint to the EU Ombudsman in April after being dissatisfied with the Commission’s responses to their concerns.
“We are contesting the Commission’s rushed dismantling of three key pillars of the Green Deal – including laws meant to improve the environmental and human impacts of global trade – a process that completely disregards people and nature’s rights,” read the joint statement from the organisations.
In addition to the due diligence laws, which the Commission opened up in February 2025, the Ombudsman’s investigation also assessed the Commission’s procedures when it revisited the Common Agricultural Policy in March 2024 and anti-people-smuggling laws in November 2023.
“Several procedural shortcomings”
Having met with Commission representatives and assessed official documents, the EU’s watchdog found “several procedural shortcomings”.
It concluded that the EU executive lacked sufficient grounds to justify the absence of an impact assessment, a public consultation, and a climate consistency assessment.
The shortcomings identified included failure to fully justify the urgency of the legislative proposals to the public or document the reasons for the Commission’s deviation from its internal rules on lawmaking.
The inquiry has also identified potential problems with the Commission’s conduct of an inter-service consultation before publishing the proposal.
“In the future, a better balance needs to be struck between having an agile administration and guaranteeing minimum procedural standards for law-making. Certain principles of good law-making cannot be compromised even for the sake of urgency,” the Ombudsman’s report added.
