The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation in the
EU (ALTER-EU)
Media advisory. For immediate release: Thursday 27 October
2011
Parliament blocks expert groups' budget until
safeguards against their capture by
special interests and increased transparency
are introduced.
The Plenary of the European Parliament yesterday
voted overwhelmingly in favour of freezing part
of the budget for the European
Commission's expert groups until new rules are introduced
to provide safeguards
against their capture by special interests and to improve transparency [1].
ALTER-EU has welcomed this initiative by the Parliament to put pressure
on the European
Commission to prevent the corporate capture of EU policy
preparation.The
Parliament has asked to:• ''Provide safeguards against
capture from special interests and corporate interests.''
•
''Ban lobbyists and corporate executives sitting in expert groups in a ‘personal
capacity’.''
• ''agendas, minutes and participants’
submissions should be available on-line''
Twenty per cent of the budget
covering travel, accommodation and other expenses of experts coming to Brussels
to advise the Commission on legislative and policy initiatives will be put in
reserve until new rules are in place.
ALTER-EU researcher Yiorgos
Vassalos said:
''ALTER-EU welcomes the Parliament vote, which should help
resolve some serious problems that exist in EU policy-drafting. Under the
current rules [2], industry lobbyists are allowed to dominate many groups and in
this
way capture new draft legislation. These privileges have to be abolished
and the Commission should urgently produce new rules".
ALTER-EU estimates
[3] that around 100 expert groups are dominated by big corporations which as a
result
get to co-draft policies and regulations in policy areas where they have
vested interests (finance, biotechnology,
raw materials, climate, agriculture,
research and more). Agendas and minutes of expert group meetings are
rarely in
the public domain.
Members of the European Parliament decided to use
their budget powers after the Commission ignored their
call to ''ensure a
balanced representation of interest groups in the membership of expert groups''
in 2008 [4], declined to involve them in the procedure for revising the rules
for expert groups in 2010 and refused to fully respond to the questions they
raised earlier this year [5].
The amendment [6] was tabled by the Greens
on the report on the 2012 EU budget by the Italian Social-democrat MEP
Francesca Balzani. It was supported by the Social-democrats, Liberals, the
United Left and almost all Conservatives and Reformists, as well as EPP MEPs
Monica Macovei and Zuzanna Roithova.
The European Ombudsman will conclude
an inquiry into whether the functioning of expert groups adheres to principles
of good governance by the end of this year.
The Commission should now
propose new rules that effectively tackle the problems of unbalanced composition
and lack of transparency.
For more information, please
contact:Yiorgos Vassalos, Corporate Europe Observatory:
yiorgos@corporateeurope.org , tel:
+32-2-8930-930 /
+32-4-8467-5162Paul de Clerck, Friends of the Earth
Europe: paul@milieudefensie.nl , tel:
+32-4-9438-0959
Notes:[1] Amendment 534 on the Francesca
Balzani's report on the 2012 EU Budget was voted by 401 in favour
and 272
against on Wednesday, October 26, 2011
[2] ALTER-EU statement on the
current rules on expert groups:
http://www.alter-eu.org/sites/default/files/documents/alter-eu.statement.expertgroups.pdf
[3]
http://www.alter-eu.org/sites/default/files/alter-eu_workshop_11-05-2011.pdf
[4]
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&reference=P6-TA-2008-0051&language=EN&ring=A6-2008-0010
[5]
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+OQ+O-2011-000009+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN&language=EN
[6]
The conditions that the Parliament put for releasing the reserve are the
following:
''The Commission shall modify the rules on expert groups in
the following way:1. Scrap exceptions in the obligation to have a balanced
composition of expert groups (technical nature + experts
in ''personal
capacity''). Prohibit a single interest category (business, union or other) from
having the majority of
the non-government and non-EU seats in any expert group.
Provide safeguards against capture from special interests and corporate
interests.
2. Ban lobbyists and corporate executives sitting in expert
groups in a ‘personal capacity’.
The Commission should clarify whether members
of an expert group are there as stakeholders or as experts committed to acting
in the public interest. The second should be thoroughly checked for conflicts of
interest
and their ''declaration of professional activities'' should be in the
public domain.
3. Common selection criteria throughout all DGs, that
guarantee balance among different categories of stakeholders and absence of
Conflict of Interests for experts and establish an obligatory open
selection process with a public call and a published mandate of each
expert group which goes beyond a simple representation of Member states
authorities.
4. All membership information (incl. affiliations), agendas,
minutes and participants’ submissions should be available on-line unless if
there is a clear and published reason for not providing this info. Reports of
groups should be published before getting adopted by the
Commission.''
The document that includes amendment 534 is accessible here
in Document 5(bis) – Part 6 : http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/editoDisplay.do?language=FR&id=3&body=BUDG
The
Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) is a
coalition of over 160 civil society groups, trade unions, academics and public
affairs firms concerned with the increasing influence exerted by corporate
lobbyists on
the political agenda in Europe, the resulting loss of democracy in
EU decision-making and the postponement, weakening,
or blockage even, of
urgently needed progress on social, environmental and consumer-protection
reforms.
Natacha Cingotti
Lobby transparency and corporate power
Friends of the Earth Europe
Tel: +32 2 893 10 23
Fax: +32 2 893 10 35
Skype: c_natacha
natacha.cingotti@foeeurope.org
www.foeeurope.org
www.facebook.com/FoEEurope
www.twitter.com/foeeurope