One year ago the European Commission launched its new transparency
regime and started publishing meetings with lobbyists. Despite this step
forward the activities of the €1.5 billion industry of Brussels
lobbyists remain largely opaque and the EU’s transparency rules still
need urgent reform.
In a report released today, Transparency International EU reveals
that the overwhelming majority of lobby meetings held by European
Commissioners and their closest advisors are with representatives of
corporate interests.
Over the last year, there have been over 7,000 meetings between
high-level Commission officials and lobbyists. With 75% of the total,
meetings with corporate lobbyists dominate the Commission’s agenda and
tech, finance and energy companies take the lead.
Google has thus had one high-level meeting per week with the Commission.
The Commissioner holding most meetings (212) with lobbyists was the Spaniard Miguel Arias Cañete (Climate & Energy).
These meetings, however, are only the tip of the iceberg as the new
transparency measures do not apply to most Commission officials, such as
the negotiating team for the EU-US Free-Trade Agreement (TTIP). More
importantly still, for lobbyists seeking to influence the European
Parliament and particularly the Council, none of the new transparency
rules apply and their activities remain opaque.
“While the European Commission has taken some steps to improve lobby
transparency, so long as the system remains voluntary and without proper
monitoring the EU’s whole transparency regime is ineffective”, says
Daniel Freund from Transparency International EU. “Given the dominance
of corporate actors, the bare minimum to prevent undue influence and
corporate capture is to have full transparency in all EU institutions
and binding rules that apply to all lobbyists. We urgently need a
mandatory register”, Freund continues.
Recent scandals, such as the Volkswagen emissions case, have exposed
the risks of too close ties between industry and politics. A
new report by Transparency International EU also provides insights into
other policy areas regulated by the European Union. As an example, the
German Commissioner Günther Oettinger has had more meetings with
Deutsche Telekom than almost all of civil society taken together.
“Looking at Oettinger’s lobby contacts it becomes clear that Telecom
operators and Tech giants such as Google, Apple or Microsoft have the
best access to the Commissioner in charge of regulating Europe’s digital
economy. Companies and their representatives make up 93% of his
meetings, which begs the questions of what access do companies have to
those officials that currently do not report their meetings”, says
Freund.
A conservative estimate of the number of EU lobbyists (full time) is
about 25,000. 8,695 is the number of lobby organisations on the EU
register, spending about €1.5 billion
each year. More than half of all entries on the EU lobby register contain factual errors or are outdated.
http://neurope.eu/article/banks-google-and-energy-companies-dominate-eu-lobbying/