Thursday

1st Jun 2023

Corporate interest dominates EU 'expert groups,' transparency NGO says

  • Corporate interests dominate special expert groups set up to advise the European Commission (Photo: europarl.europa.eu)

People with close connections to top banks implicated in the financial crisis are said to have helped steer the European Commission’s response to the economic meltdown.

“One of the key responses to the crisis, key drivers in shaping the commission’s response to the crisis is the De Larosiere expert group,” Pascoe Sabido of the Brussels-based pro-transparency network, Alter-EU, told reporters on Wednesday (6 November).

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Become an expert on Europe

Get instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

The De Larosiere group, now disbanded, was named after its chairman, a senior banking figure, Frenchman Jacques de Larosiere.

The commission forms expert groups, on subjects ranging from climate change to data privacy, when their respective departments lack the internal expertise.

“This group, unfortunately, was dominated by the very same banking institutions that were instrumental in the financial crisis,” Sabido noted.

Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers and BNP Paribas, were all linked to the group, formally known as the High-Level Group on Financial Supervision in the EU.

“Unsurprisingly enough, the conclusion of this group, the recommendations were that actually whilst there had been a crisis 'we are not going to challenge the underlying cause of it, which is self-regulation of banks and banks that are too big to fail',” Sabido added.

De Larosiere, who chairs a committee at the French Treasury and is an advisor at BNP Paribas, also has the 2009 blueprint on EU financial supervision named after him.

The 86-page report laid out a framework to create new EU agencies on banking, securities, markets, insurance and pensions and a new systemic risk board (ESRB) run by the European Central Bank to act as an overall watchdog.

Sabido’s findings figure among a larger assessment of the corporate-intensive nature of the commission’s expert groups detailed in an Alter-EU report, out Wednesday.

The report, which looks at all the new expert groups created in the past year, says the commission has failed to deliver on its commitments to reform them despite repeated warnings from members of the European Parliament.

MEPs in November 2011 and in March 2012 docked the groups' budgets in order to force the commission to remedy their corporat-dominated nature.

Parliament lifted the budget reserve in September 2012 with the understanding that the commission would balance out the groups with more civil society representatives and improve transparency.

But the Alter-EU report notes that in all the recent groups created by the commission, there are more representatives of big business than of all the other stakeholders combined.

It points out that 80 percent of the expert groups linked to the commission’s tax department, DG taxation and customs union, represent corporate interest.

Groups tied to the commission secretary-general are 64 percent corporate-dominated, while DG enterprise has around 62 percent, it notes.

The European Commission, for its part, disputes the findings.

It say some of the corporate-dominated percentages of the groups cited by Alter-EU are inaccurate, but acknowledges there is industry over-representation.

“Unfortunately, due to insufficient applications from NGOs, the established composition is not yet perfectly balanced,” said European Commission spokesperson Anthony Gravili in an email.

Gravili said the commission could only accept candidates for such groups who have real, needed expertise in the area covered by the mandate of the group.

“We will not turn the groups into debating societies of a wider political nature. That debate must and should take place elsewhere,” he said.

He pointed out that the general policy in place for the whole commission is to issue, in most cases, public calls for interest in membership of a given group.

He said the mandate, the membership and the work of each of the groups is now published online - “so the whole process is fully transparent, also as promised.”

ECB set to become more transparent

The European Central Bank kept its main interest rate at a historic low Thursday and indicated that in future the reasoning behind such decisions will be made public.

MEPs to urge block on Hungary taking EU presidency in 2024

"This will be the first time a member state that is under the Article 7 procedure will take over the rotating presidency of the council," French Green MEP Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield, the key lawmaker on Hungary, warned.

European Parliament scales back luxury MEP pension fund

The European Parliament's Bureau, a political body composed of the president and its vice-presidents, decided to slash payouts from the fund by 50 percent, freeze automatic indexations, and increase the pension age from 65 to 67.

WhoisWho? Calls mount to bring back EU directory

NGOs and lobbyists slammed the EU commission for removing contact details of non-managerial staff from its public register, arguing that the institution is now less transparent.

Column

What a Spanish novelist can teach us about communality

In a world where cultural clashes and sectarianism seems to be on the increase, Spanish novelist Javier Cercas (b.1962) takes the opposite approach. He cherishes both life in the big city and in the countryside.

Opinion

Poland and Hungary's ugly divorce over Ukraine

What started in 2015 as a 'friends-with-benefits' relationship between Viktor Orbán and Jarosław Kaczyński, for Hungary and Poland, is ending in disgust and enmity — which will not be overcome until both leaders leave.

Latest News

  1. Europe's TV union wooing Lavrov for splashy interview
  2. ECB: eurozone home prices could see 'disorderly' fall
  3. Adapting to Southern Europe's 'new normal' — from droughts to floods
  4. Want to stop forced migration from West Africa? Start by banning bottom trawling
  5. Germany unsure if Orbán fit to be 'EU president'
  6. EU Parliament chief given report on MEP abuse 30 weeks before sanction
  7. EU clashes over protection of workers exposed to asbestos
  8. EU to blacklist nine Russians over jailing of dissident

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. International Sustainable Finance CentreJoin CEE Sustainable Finance Summit, 15 – 19 May 2023, high-level event for finance & business
  2. ICLEISeven actionable measures to make food procurement in Europe more sustainable
  3. World BankWorld Bank Report Highlights Role of Human Development for a Successful Green Transition in Europe
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersNordic summit to step up the fight against food loss and waste
  5. Nordic Council of MinistersThink-tank: Strengthen co-operation around tech giants’ influence in the Nordics
  6. EFBWWEFBWW calls for the EC to stop exploitation in subcontracting chains

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. InformaConnecting Expert Industry-Leaders, Top Suppliers, and Inquiring Buyers all in one space - visit Battery Show Europe.
  2. EFBWWEFBWW and FIEC do not agree to any exemptions to mandatory prior notifications in construction
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersNordic and Baltic ways to prevent gender-based violence
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: Economic gender equality now! Nordic ways to close the pension gap
  5. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: Pushing back the push-back - Nordic solutions to online gender-based violence
  6. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: The Nordics are ready to push for gender equality

Join EUobserver

Support quality EU news

Join us