EU's new lobbyist register is out of date, NGOs say
"If this was 1976, you could say [the EU register] is a big step" (Photo: CE)
ANDREW RETTMAN
19.03.2007 @ 17:49 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The 15,000 or so lobbyists working in Brussels will from Spring 2008 have to disclose information on clients and fees under new European Commission rules, but the scheme suffers from serious loopholes and lack of ambition, transparency campaigners say.
The commission's blueprint for a lobbyists' register due to be published Wednesday (21 March) foresees a website run by two EU officials that will list all PR consultancies, in-house corporate staff and public interest NGOs as well as their clients or donors and the fees or budgets they get to influence EU policy.
Lobbyists who opt not to join the voluntary scheme will be forbidden from taking part in formal EU consultation exercises on new EU laws and face professional stigma. A code of conduct for lobbyists will also be drafted in autumn this year, with a review of the whole scheme's success tabled for Spring 2009.
"The commission considers it neccesary and proportionate to require registrants to declare relevant budgetary figures and breakdowns of major clients and/or funding sources," the blueprint - seen by EUobserver - states, inviting other EU bodies such as the European Parliament to join the scheme.
The register is tougher than initial ideas put forward last May in terms of disclosing fees, sanctioning access to formal consultations and holding the review in Spring 2009 - which means the current commission will have to take responsibility for its success and potentially table "stricter measures" if the voluntary project fails.
"It's a sort of breakthrough," Olivier Hoedeman of Amsterdam-based NGO Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) said. "If a big PR firm uploads a budget that looks far too small then you will know where to start investigating [non-compliance]." NGO Transparency International (TI) also cautiously welcomed the move.
But Mr Hoedeman's CEO as well as Greenpeace - who disclose their own funding sources already - say the register plan remains riddled with loopholes and does very little to address wider problems of hidden corporate influence on EU policy-making.
To begin with, it is unclear who - except for investigative journalists - will monitor compliance with the register's rules, in the case of a company that discloses some but not all of its clients or which simply gives false data to the two commission men running the website. It is equally unclear what criteria will be used to measure "success" or failure in the 2009 review.
"[The register] is really no more than an appeal to people's consciences or reputations," CEO's Mr Hoedeman explained. "It's strange to keep it voluntary, as there are such predictable problems: those who have an interest not to disclose information will not do it."
The US and Canada as well as several EU states such as Poland and Lithuania already running mandatory registers, NGOs point out, making the commission's much vaunted reforms look badly dated even before they are born.
The revolving doors problem
On top of this, the lobbyists' register and code fails to address the whole other side of the equation - the ethical behaviour of commission staff - especially in terms of "revolving doors" or the practice of senior EU officials securing well-paid jobs with major chemicals or energy firms weeks after they leave their EU posts.
Some NGOs propose EU officials should keep logbooks of meetings with lobbyists during office hours to make sure firms which opt out of the register really do lose privileged access to policymakers. They also say EU staff should have a "cooling-off period" before taking industry jobs or before coming from industry to Brussels.
"I am looking at this from the wider perspective of an enlarging and increasingly powerful EU at the start of the 21st century and its stated ambition to increase transparency for citizens on how it works," Greenpeace Europe director Jorgo Riss said. "In these terms it's very weak...If this was 1976, you could say [the voluntary register] is a big step."
The EU has not had a scandal of the magnitude of Jack Abramoff - a Washington lobbyist exposed in 2005 for cheating clients and bribing US officials to the tune of $66 million - but several recent cases of shady dealings by the chemicals and energy lobbies are beginning to ring alarm bells in the EU capital.
In one case, a spokesman for industry commissioner Guenter Verheugen on two occasions told press that "two out of three" senior EU officials - Lena Perenius, Uta Jensen-Korte and Ralf Burgstahler - who had ties with the chemicals industry did not work on the REACH chemicals law adopted last year.
But Greenpeace later proved Ms Perenius, who moved to chemicals lobby CEFIC shortly after leaving the commission, Jensen-Korte who worked for CEFIC and chemicals firm Bayer before coming to the commission and Burgstahler who worked for chemicals giant BASF, were all involved in shaping the chemicals law.
The EU Ombudsman queried the commisison's apparent dishonesty on the topic last year, but is still waiting for a reply.
Energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs in March sacked one of his senior advisors, Rolf Linkohr, after CEO demonstrated Linkohr also worked for energy firms EnBW and Vattenfall Europe. The revelation prompted the commission to publish a list of all 55 special advisors working for the Brussels team.
Transparency deficit
Mystery also surrounds Brussels lobbying on climate change, with no big oil or gas firms willing to admit they still fund think-tanks which try to debunk the consensus on the urgency of global warming, but with senior EU officials and MEPs regularly receiving "scientific papers" from obscure NGOs suggesting that human activity may not, after all, be a major factor in the problem.
Administration commissioner Siim Kallas first launched plans for the new lobbyists' register back in 2005 as part of a wider transparency initiative also embracing disclosure of who gets what from the EU's Common Agricultural Policy. The Estonian commissioner's plan received strong backing from Swedish communications commissioner Margot Wallstrom and Danish farm commissioner Marianne Fischer-Boel.
But the project was reportedly watered down by commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso and the powerful industry triumvirate of Guenter Verheugen, single market commissioner Charlie McCreevy and trade commissioner Peter Mandelson when it started looking "too radical," some veteran campaigners say.