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29th Mar 2024

Brussels calls bluff on lobbyist register boycott

Some of Brussels' most powerful lobbyists are threatening to boycott the European Commission's new register over financial disclosure rules. But EU officials have said they are happy to call the rebels' bluff.

The register - due to be published in Spring 2008 - will ask lobbyists to estimate their annual budgets or turnovers, with a percentage breakdown of which clients or donors pay what in a bid to prevent future scandals by boosting transparency.

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  • Shedding light on lobbyist funding is not proving easy (Photo: thesetides.com)

The register is to cover the mixed bunch of 15,000 or so people in Brussels who work for trade associations, in-house corporate PR departments, law firms, public service NGOs and specialist PR firms such as APCO, Burson-Marsteller and Hill and Knowlton.

Firms that opt out of the voluntary scheme risk losing access to official EU consultation exercises and attracting stigma. If too many opt out, anti-fraud commissioner Siim Kallas has promised to set in motion a mandatory register in Spring 2009.

The commission says the vast bulk of the 15,000-strong community - such as automotive and chemical industry trade associations, in-house staff and NGOs - have been calling to sign up since the scheme was launched in March. But one rebel group is trying to change the rules.

EPACA and IPRA (which represent specialist PR firms and consultants) as well as SEAP (which represents over 200 individual lobbyists from various sectors) say the financial disclosure model is too complex to calculate, too vague, too burdensome and based on the "false" assumption that "money equals influence."

The hardliners - EPACA and IPRA - have indicated that their members will not join the register. "In the end, he [Mr Kallas] won't have a single consultant registering to his project," EPACA chief Jose Lalloum told EUobserver on Wednesday (20 June).

'Safer not to register'

A recent legal opinion taken by EPACA suggests it is "safer not to register than to register" in terms of implications for company audits and access to privileged information for competitors. An internal EPACA survey suggested few if any of its 38 member companies will sign up.

"It's heading for failure," IPRA said, suggesting an alternative disclosure model that would mandate EU policy-makers to request financial information from lobbyists on a private "one-to-one" basis, instead of in a public-access list.

The more moderate SEAP says it will not advise its members to boycott, but is warning them of the dangers. SEAP president Lyn Trytsman-Gray explained that vague disclosure rules mean each lobbyist might count his budget differently, creating a register with "non-comparable" figures.

SEAP wants a model where the total turnover is not given, but only a percentage breakdown by client or donor. Ms Trytsman-Gray and IPRA's Mr Sutherland are also worried that NGOs will use the new register to paint a skewed picture of big business pulling the strings in the EU capital

"Contrary to reality, money cannot be equated with influence," a new SEAP position paper says, citing a British Hansard Society study in April, which found that 62 percent of UK parliamentarians questioned said charities are more persuasive than corporate pressure groups.

Money and influence

A senior EU official working on the register mocked the argument, however. "Of course there's no direct, proportional link. But if the lobbying professionals question that money brings influence, I wonder why they are in business at all. I wonder what they say to their clients when they bill them."

On the complaint that lobbying turnover is too complex to calculate, especially for companies with in-house staff who only spend part of their time trying to shape EU decisions, he pointed out that most of the EU-active companies have already complied with more strict US legislation in the field.

"I could sit down with any company and in two hours write down how to calculate it, but I am not their accountant. They know when they are lobbying. If their CEO comes up from Paris to Brussels on a day trip, they know what he is here for," the contact explained.

Pro-transparency NGOs such as Corporate Observatory Europe and Greenpeace have also criticised the lobby groups' "unconvincing attempts to preserve the status quo."

'Denying the obvious'

"I find it incredible how the commercial lobbyists try to deny the obvious: money buys you lobbyists and events and communications and think-tanks - and that's what gets you influence in Brussels," Greenpeace Europe director, Jorgo Riss, said.

As for the commission, Mr Kallas' team has made clear it does not plan to budge. "There's no point in lobbying against the provisions of the commission's decision. The ideas set out in this paper [the EU's March communication on the register] are not for discussion," the EU official said.

"We'll see what happens when the register comes out," he added. "In the end EPACA will be more or less forced into the voluntary system."

Brussels told to take tougher line on lobbyists

If the European Commission wants its proposed register for lobbyists in the EU to work, the registration has to be made compulsory rather than voluntary as is currently planned, lobbyists themselves said on Monday.

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