[P2P-F] Fwd: Parliament blocks expert groups' budget until safeguards against their capture by special interests and increased transparency are introduced

Mon Nov 7 00:45:39 CET 2011

Ideally, Next step would be to enable such transparency including what
concerns national ministers operating via the EU Councilium, all
politicians active within the parties, etc

I hope that this recent decision from the EU Parliament is not merely party
politics ( and influence of certain lobbies via corrupted politics ? ) vs
bureaucrats !

----- Original Message -----
*From:*
*To:* aitec-lobby at reseau-ipam.org
*Sent:* Thursday, October 27, 2011 4:08 PM
*Subject:* [aitec-lobby] Une victoire d'ALTER-EU à Bruxelles : Parliament
blocks expert groups' budget until safeguards against their capture by
special interests and increased transparency are introduced

En anglais ci-dessous, l'annonce d'une victoire dans la lutte contre
l'accaparement des groupes
d'experts de la commission par les intérêts privés : le parlement a bloqué
leur budget en demandant des changements dans leur fonctionnement.

a+

Florent

*De : *Natacha
*Date : *27 octobre 2011 08:45:31 HAEC
*À : *Natacha
*Objet : **[ALTER-EU Coalition] ALTER-EU: Parliament blocks expert groups'
budget until safeguards against their capture by special interests and
increased transparency are introduced*

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 at corporateeurope.org, tel:
+32-2-8930-930 / +32-4-8467-5162

Paul de Clerck, Friends of the Earth Europe: paul at 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 at foeeurope.org www.foeeurope.org
www.facebook.com/FoEEurope www.twitter.com/foeeurope

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