The Ombudsman recalled that Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, as solemnly proclaimed by, among others, the President of the European Parliament, prohibits any discrimination based on language. He therefore insisted that the burden of proof lay with Parliament to show that its language policy in this case was appropriate and proportionate. The Ombudsman considered that Parliament's explanation was
not convincing and proposed a friendly solution whereby Parliament would acknowledge the shortcomings of the campaign, as well as the fact that the proportion of the Finnish population which speaks Swedish is
...[+++] not relevant to the status of that language as an official language of the EU or to its status under the Finnish Constitution.