Bursting Brussels Bubble - ALTER-EU

216 Pages·2010·1.59 MB·English

Bursting
the
Brussels
Bubble
the battle to exposecorporate lobbyingat the heart of the EU
ALTER-
Ewww.alter-eu.Uorg

Published by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation
in the EU (ALTER-EU) Rue d’Edimbourg 26, 1050 Brussels, Belgium.
The full contents of this book are also available online in a pdf version for
printing and in an html version with regularly checked hyperlinks to all online
sources: www.alter-eu.org/book/bursting-the-brussels-bubble
Editorial team:Helen Burley (Corporate Europe Observatory),
William Dinan (SpinWatch),Kenneth Haar (Corporate Europe Observatory),
Olivier Hoedeman (Corporate Europe Observatory)
and Erik Wesselius (Corporate Europe Observatory)
Final editing and proofreading:Deborah Eade
Cover and design:www.onehemisphere.se
Images: © Plainview, Biansho, M. Fischer, Jorisvo/Dreamstime
Printing:www.beelzepub.be
Printed with vegetable-based ink on 100% recycled paper.
ISBN/EAN:978-90-9025327-5
Individual chapters © their authors 2010; book as a whole © ALTER-EU 2010 Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

about ALTER-EU
The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation in the EU
(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,
and blockage, of urgently needed progress on social, environmental, and
consumer-protection reforms.
ALTER-EU is a coalition of organisations, not an organisation in its own right.
It does not have its own staff or budget. Organisations on the Steering
Committee, together with some other ALTER-EU members, contribute staff
time and share the costs for specific activities.
ALTER-EU is registered in the European Commission Register of Interest Representatives under number: 2694372574-63
ALTER-EU Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation in the EU
Rue d’Edimbourg 26, Brussels 1050, Belgium
[email protected]
www.alter-eu.org

contents
Bursting the Brussels bubble
the battle to exposecorporate lobbyingat the heart of the EU
A Foreword 9
Susan George
Introduction 15
ALTER-EU Steering Committee
Part 1:Brussels – a rough guide to the bubble
1.Brussels: a lobbying paradise 23
Will Dinan, Spinwatch & Erik Wesselius, Corporate Europe Observatory
2.Chemical warfare – the lobbying battle on REACH 33
Jorgo Riss, Greenpeace
3.Journalists caught in the lobbyists’ web 48
Marc Gruber, European Federation of Journalists
4.Paying the piper – think tanks and lobbying 53
Dieter Plehwe, LobbyControl
Part 2:Inside the bubble
5.Insider trading – how big business helped set trade policy 67
Vicky Cann, World Development Movement
6.Expert groups – letting corporate interests set the agenda? 76
Yiorgos Vassalos, Corporate Europe Observatory
7.Banking on the bankers – regulation and the financial crisis 87
Kenneth Haar, Yiorgos Vassalos, Corporate Europe Observatory
& Andy Rowell, Spinwatch
8.Members only? Conflicts of interest in the European Parliament 94
Andy Rowell, Spinwatch
9.Failure to act – the Commission turns a blind eye to conflicts of interest 103
Olivier Hoedeman, Corporate Europe Observatory
10.Public or private? The problem of industry secondments 114
Nina Katzemich, LobbyControl
Part 3:Bursting the bubble
11.Obama and K Street – lobbying reform in the US 125
Craig Holman, Public Citizen
12.Beyond satire – the Worst EU Lobbying Awards 2005-2008 134
Frank van Schaik
13.The battle for lobbying transparency 139
Will Dinan, Spinwatch
14.Access denied? Freedom of Information under threat 148
Tony Bunyan, Statewatch
15.Holding corporations to account – the struggle for regulation 154
Paul de Clerck, Friends of the Earth Europe
16.An act for Parliament 162
Claude Turmes & Fred Thoma, Green Group in the European Parliament
17.Cash cow – digging the dirt on farm subsidies 168
Nils Mulvad, Brigitte Alfter & Jack Thurston, www.farmsubsidy.org
18.Responsible lobbying – urging companies to behave better 177
Christian Humborg, Transparency International Germany
Part 4:Unfinished business
19.A way forward 187
ALTER-EU Steering Committee
Annexes:
The Founding Statement of ALTER-EU 200
Index 207
a foreword
Susan George
A particularly encouraging recent development is the emergence of a number
of sharp and effective corporate lobby watchdog groups, including Corporate
Europe Observatory in Brussels, German-based LobbyControl and UK-based
Spinwatch. These groups understand the importance of studying the rich and
powerful, especially transnational corporations. The watchdogs have proven
relentless in their pursuit of information and know how to make their
material come alive and to popularise it for a non-scholarly, ordinary-citizen
audience. Now they are part of the Alter-EU coalition, made up of over 160
NGOs and trade unions from across Europe.
So it is a great pleasure for me to introduce this new collective book entitled
Bursting the Brussels Bubble - the battle to expose corporate lobbying at the
heart of the EU. ALTER-EU concentrates on the scandal of the thousands of
corporate lobbyists who largely make policy in the European Union. The coalition
has made some headway - at least the lobbies issue is now firmly on the political
agenda and the EU has been forced to set up a voluntary register for lobbyists -
laughably ineffective but a register still - and that is at least a foot in the door.
The forces that oppose any disclosure and any reduction of preponderant
corporate membership in all the important EU ‘expert groups’ that make
policy in every conceivable area can supply plenty of inertia to prevent change;
they maintain privileged access to Commissioners, Commission staff (24,000
strong) and parliamentarians and they have, so far, won most of the battles -
but not all of them. In fact, if the EU were at all democratic or transparent,
the corporations would have already been forced to admit defeat. Even in the
United States, not known for a virulent anti-business stance, lobbyists have
to register with the Congress; they must declare how much they are paid and
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by whom. In contrast, European political structures provide no foolproof way
to discover who lobbies whom, for which policies, nor with what budgets. The
solid firewalls, for the moment, are still standing and what one does learn
must often be through stealth, loopholes or lawsuits.
ALTER-EU is not just up against a barrage of secrecy protecting special
corporate interests - it faces two other formidable barriers preventing public
knowledge of -much less control over - the way power is exercised in the EU.
The first is the neoliberal, market-oriented ideology at the foundation of the
European construction which permeates the entire enterprise and positively
encourages corporate control; the second is a structural lack of democracy.
It is no accident that the defeated Constitution, now replaced by the virtually
identical Lisbon Treaty, used the word “market” 78 times and the phrase “free
and undistorted competition” in seven crucial articles; “competition” has even
become an “objective” of the Union and all economic activities, including what
one used to call ‘public services’ are specifically subject to competition. In line
with the express wishes of BusinessEurope [formerly UNICE, the Union of
Industrial and Employers’ Confederation of Europe], there will be no Europe-
wide taxation and fiscal policy must be decided unanimously. Or, as a member
of the elite European Roundtable of Industrialists put it, the Commission is
“extremely open to the business community so that when businessmen like
myself face an issue that can only be solved politically, we have access to
excellent Commissioners like [several names follow]1. ALTER-EU and this book
provide myriad other examples of deep corporate involvement in EU affairs.
Even more damaging is the regression of democracy that characterises the
European Union. We are not merely facing the classic, well-known so-called
“democratic deficit”—this is much too weak and mild description of the EU
status quo—but rather an outright attempt to demolish the democratic
achievements of the past two-hundred and some years. I am not exaggerating.
The democracy demolition squads have eliminated nearly all the possible
checks and balances on power so that the Commission along with the Council
can, one way or another, more or less do as they please. Take for example the
popular mobilisation against the Bolkestein directive aimed at reducing
workers’ rights, salaries and working conditions. Thanks to citizen protests,
the European Parliament forced through a few changes. But then the
European Court of Justice made four important decisions that nullified the
changes and reinstated Bolkestein.
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