In April 2011 following a public outcry about ex-Commissioners going through the revolving door into industry (lobby) jobs, the European Commission introduced a slightly stricter Code of Conduct for Commissioners. No fewer than 6 out of the 13 Commissioners who left in February 2010 went into such jobs, including powerful Commissioners like Gunter Verheugen and Charlie McCreevy, who took a whole string of lobbying jobs provoking conflicts of interest. The Commission blocked just one job move because of glaring conflicts of interests (McCreevy’s move to NBNK Investments); the rest were given the green light with only very limited restrictions imposed on their activities with their new employers. Announcing the new code, Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič also promised that the Commission would create a website where the public could access information about decisions about Commissioners moving into new jobs. This promise of online transparency was an important change. Previously cumbersome freedom-of-information requests, usually initiated by NGOs, was the only way of shedding any light on Commissioners’ job moves.
Unfortunately it is now clear that the Commission is not in any hurry to implement the promise, quite the contrary. The Commission has informed Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) that the promised website will only be launched when the current Commissioners depart in 2015. This means that the Commission's decisions regarding the Commissioners who left in 2010 will not be published anywhere on the Commission’s website, brushing the related revolving door scandals under the carpet. It is hard to justify why the Commission should not implement its promise now, starting with the most recent cases and then updating the website with new decisions as they happen. This disappointing approach raises questions about the Commission’s commitment to pro-active transparency.
While we’re waiting for the Commission to implement its transparency promise, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) website is the place to go for these types of documents. ALTER-EU published a large number of Commission documents regarding the approval procedure for the above-mentioned six ex-Commissioners online back in spring 2011. ALTER-EU has now updated the site with documents about several new cases, received through freedom-of-information requests (using the excellent asktheeu.org website).
Among the new cases are ex-Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner's move to join the board of Alpine Group, a large multinational construction company. The Commission approved this move in the same superficial way as the numerous other board positions she has accepted, without any cooling-off period or ban on lobbying.
Also new on the website is the Commission’s approval of ex-Commissioner Meglena Kuneva's appointment at the Trilateral Commission, a neoliberal thinktank.
Meanwhile, the Commission continues to reject calls for pro-active transparency around its decisions about Commission officials (staff) going through the revolving door. In a letter last month, the Commission argued that introducing a revolving door register for Commission officials would violate data protection and privacy rules because names “are also considered personal data”.
In its response to Commissioner Šefčovič, ALTER-EU has countered this argument and reiterated calls for a revolving door register, pointing to the fact that such a register already exists in the UK. CEO's RevolvingDoorWatch pages will also include information about new cases as we find them.
Monday, 23 January 2012
Ex-Commissioners going through the revolving door: transparency promise delayed
Thursday, 8 December 2011
That revolving door just keeps on spinning ... yet the Commission seems unwilling to do anything about it
A couple of weeks ago, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) launched a new campaign to block the revolving door. Alongside numerous cases of officials, often at the very highest levels in the EU institutions, who have gone through the revolving door to join Brussels' lucrative lobby industry, there was a comprehensive analysis about why the current rules (contained in the Staff Regulations) don't work. In short, they are often ignored, contain loopholes, and aren't properly enforced anyway. And ALTER-EU politely pointed out to Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič that, as the Staff Regulations were already being reviewed, wouldn't it be a good idea to look at the revolving door rules at the same time?
Unfortunately, the response from the Commission has been disappointing, to say the least.
The Commissioner's spokesperson has said that there are already very “strict rules” already in place, although that is hard to believe when the ALTER-EU report pointed out a number of officials who have ignored the rules (and gotten away with it, without sanction), or were not covered by the rules (because of the loophole which excludes staff on temporary contracts from systematic consideration under the rules). Together with the fact that there is only one known case of an official actually being prevented from taking a job under these so-called “strict rules”, the Commission's record in this area seems pretty poor.
Instead, it seems perfectly acceptable for the EU's top officials (and by top we mean Directors-General, advisers to Commissioners and Heads of Cabinet) to go through the revolving door to work for Brussels lobby firms where their corporate clients have a huge interest in hearing the insights of, and benefiting from the personal networks of, such senior officials.
As for Commissioner Šefčovič himself, he might need to do a bit more homework on the revolving door issue. He told an event last week, that EU Commissioners have the longest cooling off period in the world when it comes to the revolving door. But in fact, there is no cooling off period at all for Commissioners; they have a notification period of 18 months during which they must notify the Commission of their new proposed jobs and gain authorisation. This is not the same thing!
But the Commissioner did say one encouraging thing: “We should work hard to avoid conflicts of interest and privileged information. We cannot track what thousands of pensioners are doing but if there are individual cases we will look at them”.
In this case, perhaps the Commissioner could start with looking at the revolving door cases which CEO has listed on its new RevolvingDoorWatch tool. Amongst other cases, RevolvingDoorWatch features Pablo Asbo from Spain, a DG Competition case handler for six years, who is now Associate Director for Competition at Avisa Partners, a Brussels lobby consultancy. At least one of Avisa's current clients was party to a case that Asbo dealt with whilst at DG Competition. Eline Post from the Netherlands was also a case handler at DG Competition and she is now a senior consultant for competition, also at Avisa Partners. Neither Post nor Asbo had authorisation for these moves until CEO raised these cases with the Commission, which constitutes a clear breach of the rules. CEO has submitted complaints about both of these cases.
RevolvingDoorWatch will continue to be updated in the coming weeks as we find new cases, or update current cases. Unfortunately the revolving door problem is not going away for Commissioner Šefčovič...
Monday, 5 December 2011
Swedish MEP lobbying row underlines need for rules on parliament-industry forums
Swedish environment minister Lena Ek last week came under fire for her role in the European Energy Forum (EEF), a cross-party group of MEPs which is funded by large corporations such as Shell, Nord Stream and Vattenfall. Ek, who acted as vice-chairman of the EEF during her time as an MEP, had failed to formally withdraw from her EEF role when she became environment minister. In an article headlined “Environment minister in controversial lobby group” Svenska Dagbladet, one of the largest newspapers in Sweden on 25 November argued that the corporate members of the EEF buy access to MEPs. The EEF's corporate members pay a fee of least 7,000 euro per year for participating in the EEF's dinner debates. The newspaper quoted Social Democratic MEP Marita Ulvskog who declined the invitation from the EEF on ethical grounds, to underline her “independence from such interests”. Green MEP Carl Schlyter commented that the EEF “is very clearly an industry-funded activity. The goal is not to have an open debate about Europe's future energy supply. They want to influence”.
In an article the following day environment spokesperson of the Social Democrats in the Swedish parliament, Matilda Ernkrans, stepped up the pressure on Ek: “I think it is very serious if Sweden now has an environment minister with very close ties to the nuclear and oil lobby”. Ernkrans suggested that the prime minister should intervene on the matter. The controversy also resulted in Svenska Dagbladet publishing a background analysis article looking into the growing lobbying pressure from industry towards MEPs, not the least from the energy and chemical industries hoping to weaken environmental regulation.
Five days after the story first broke, Lena Ek broke the silence in an interview in Svenska Dagbladet. “I understand the discussion, there are obviously problems”, EK said, but went on to argue that the EEF has a balanced programme that is approved by its MEP members and even claimed that “the politicians set the agenda”. A look at the EEF's website gives the impression that its programme is heavily industry-led, including dinner debates on 'the Finnish way' in expanding nuclear power (with the CEO of a Finnish nuclear company as speaker) and on greater gas consumption as part of climate policy (with a speaker from gas giant GDF Suez), although the programme also features corporate speakers on solar and wind energy. The EEF has also this year organised MEPs visits to the oil sands of Alberta, Canada and to a nuclear power plant in France (“at the invitation of AREVA and EDF”). The next dinner debate, in the coming week in Strasbourg, features a Eurelectric lobbyist on “Improving the Energy Efficiency Directive“. Eurelectric is lobbying heavily for weakening the directive.
Responding to what her approach was to handle the heavy lobbying which MEPs are faced with, Ek relied: “by being open about who you meet with and trying to organise it in a transparent organisation that follow the rules of the parliament”. If this refers to the EEF, then Ek's remarks are unjustified. The EEF is not a recognised Intergroup and therefore does not actually fall under any European Parliament rules. This is a serious loophole in the European Parliament's transparency and ethics rules. As shown in a May 2011 report by Corporate Europe Observatory, the EEF is one of least 15 unregulated cross-party groups that are “acting as 'submarines of industry', bringing together MEPs and industry under the radar of Parliamentary rules to achieve policy and legislative changes that benefit industry”. Unfortunately cross-party groups were not included in the Parliament's new code of conduct for MEPs that was approved last week. The debate in Sweden shows that strong rules are needed. Such rules should include a mandatory transparency register as well as ethics obligations.
The EEF has in the meantime updated its website so there is no reference to Lena Ek anymore.
Friday, 25 November 2011
Block the revolving door!
Brussels bubble watchers might remember the names of Verheugen, McCreevy, Ferrero-Waldner, Kuneva – all former EU commissioners who left public service and went through the revolving door into lobby jobs or other jobs which provoked conflicts of interest with their former work. Their cases caused a furore and led to the development of a code of conduct for commissioners and some (slightly) tighter rules.
The names of Carl, Dethomas, Lönngren, Taylor, Westrup, are not well-known, but these EU officials have also gone through the revolving door between the institutions and the Brussels lobby industry. Some of them were at the very highest positions within the EU, yet none were the subject of a cooling-off period which would have prevented them from accepting these lobby jobs. These individuals are symbols of a major, but largely unrecognised phenomenon, and one which is at the heart of the privileged access to EU decision-making process which corporate interests enjoy. 
This week, the ALTER-EU coalition, of which Corporate Europe Observatory is a steering committee member, has launched a brand new report and campaign aimed at getting new rules which would block the revolving door between the EU institutions and the lobby industry. The report makes clear that the current rules are weak, not properly applied or enforced, and contain numerous loopholes.
Take the cases listed above: Mogens Peter Carl, the former Director-General at DG Trade and then DG Environment moved to lobby consultancy Kreab Gavin Anderson just six months after leaving the Commission. Kreab represents ICI and Scania, amongst others.
Bruno Dethomas, the former Head of the European Commission’s Eastern Partnership Taskforce (looking at relations between EU and non EU states including Russia) retired in December 2010, joining lobby consultancy G+ Europe in March 2011. G+ Europe’s clients include Gazprom Export and the Russian Federation.
Thomas Lönngren was Executive Director of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) until December 2010. In January 2011, he set up his own consultancy and joined the NDA group, which specialises in advising the pharmaceutical industry. EMA only imposed limited restrictions on Lönngren after NGOs complained about the conflicts of interest provoked by these new jobs.
Derek Taylor, a senior energy adviser working for DG Energy moved to lobby consultancy Burson-Marsteller to work as an energy adviser within weeks of retiring from the Commission and without receiving authorisation. Burson-Marsteller's clients include Suez Environnement and ExxonMobil.
And finally, Mårten Westrup, an official at DG Enterprise moved to BusinessEurope, Brussels' most powerful lobby organisation, to advise on climate change issues, before returning to the Commission, to work at DG Energy. As he worked on a consultancy basis for the Commission, he was considered exempt from the revolving door rules.
These moves through the revolving door by these officials raise profound questions about conflicts of interest. Considering the likely extent of these guys' contact books, policy know-how, and insights into EU decision-making, it is no wonder that the lobby companies that now employ them are proud to trumpet them on their websites.
There is no doubt that when officials go through the revolving door, it's the lobby firms, and their clients who benefit. The officials themselves do pretty well out of it too. Some say that top EU officials can earn up to 500 euro per hour in the lobby industry. Nice work if you can get it.
And the point is that it is all too easy for these officials to get this work - the EU institutions do not appear to take the revolving door issue seriously. One immediate step they could take would be to publish a list of all revolving doors cases and what response the institutions have made to each one. Something similar already happens in the UK, but the EU appears to resist such a proactive approach to transparency. ALTER-EU also wants to see a cooling-off period of at least two years for all EU staff from becoming lobbyists and new rules to regulate lobbyists who join the EU institutions.
Join ALTER-EU to block the revolving door!
Wednesday, 9 November 2011
Gifts, shares and other loopholes – the MEP code of conduct
If a week is a long time in politics, then it appears that seven months is a veritable aeon. That's how long it has been since the Sunday Times exposed the cash-for-influence scandal which engulfed three MEPs and caused some soul-searching in the EU's only elected institution. But the shock and embarrassment that this caused seems to have faded into the distant past, at least for some Members.
MEPs on the Parliament's constitutional affairs committee are getting ready to vote on the new code of conduct, which was drafted as a response to the scandal and which is supposed to usher in a new wave of transparency and accountability among MEPs. Yet judging by some of the amendments which have been tabled, the original good intentions appear under threat.
Several problematic amendments have been tabled by Charles Tannock MEP, a British conservative. He proposes diluting the requirement on MEPs to declare shareholdings so that they would only need to declare those which consist of 15 per cent of the issued shares or where the shares' value exceeds one year's salary. An MEP earns about 84 000 euros a year, so this would potentially allow some Members to avoid declaring significant financial interests. Tannock's amendment significantly weakens the original text which calls upon MEPs to declare any shareholding which had “potential public policy implications” which presumably would cover practically all shareholdings.
But Tannock's interest in this amendment makes more sense if you look at his current declaration of financial interests. This was updated on 19 October and Tannock makes clear that, in addition to his previous declarations of unpaid directorships at the 3Legs group of companies, he also is a shareholder at 3Legs Resources (an oil and shale gas exploration company). Tannock does not reveal the value of these shares.
Tannock has tabled a further amendment, similar to that drafted by another British MEP, Andrew Duff, which would exclude hospitality from the definition of gifts. Under the new code, MEPs would be banned from accepting gifts worth more than 150 euros. The Tannock/ Duff amendments would mean that MEPs could continue to accept accommodation and other hospitality without limit. Yet hospitality in the form of good dinners and nights away are an important instrument in a lobbyist's toolbox.
Tannock himself declared an all-expenses paid trip to Taiwan (May 2011) paid by the Taiwan government office in Brussels, and a three-night stay in Jerusalem (February 2011), paid by European Friends of Israel. Under the Tannock/ Duff amendments these would be allowed; under the original, MEPs would no longer be able to accept such largesse.
Duff argues that, without his amendment, the 150 euro limit would deter MEPs from attending conferences because hotel rooms tend to cost more than this. But for important conferences, MEPs' official allowances could cover the costs, with the benefit that MEPs would not be seen to be 'indebted' to the organisation that had picked up their tab.
There are other amendments which also seek to weaken the draft code of conduct. A group of Italian MEPs have tabled amendments which would delete huge swathes of the code, on the grounds that the current rules which apply are adequate enough. But judging by the scandal in March, this is patently not true.
But even the amendments tabled by Tannock and Duff would break the cross-party consensus which agreed the draft code back in July, and would weaken it significantly. Elected MEPs should be open and transparent about their outside financial interests and they should be held to account over their conflicts of interest. The proposed code of conduct for MEPs is not perfect, but it does represent an important step forward in terms of ethics regulation within the Parliament.
At a time of falling public confidence in the EU institutions, MEPs should be doing all that they can to promote transparency and accountability. Some MEPs may have forgotten the cash-for-influence scandal in March, but European voters may have better memories.
Wednesday, 26 October 2011
European Public Affairs Awards Showcase Worst Lobbyists?
Voting closes today for the European Public Affairs Awards, the self-congratulatory awards organised by Brussels lobby consultancy firms and their lobby groups EPACA and SEAP.
Categories for the EPA Awards include 'Consultancy of the year', 'Rising Star of the Year' and 'Think-tank of the Year. As in previous years, it is astonishing to see that the EPA award organisers have shortlisted several nominees that would fit much better as candidates for the Worst EU Lobbying Awards.
There's no lack of examples of dubious lobbying undertaken by global lobby consultancy giants of Burson-Marsteller, Edelman or APCO, but the example that stands out this year is Aspect Consulting. Aspect is one of three nominees to win the 'Consultancy of the year' award and an Aspect lobbyist is nominated as 'Consultant of the year'. Aspect was nominated for the Worst Lobbying Award a few years ago and despite being an active player in EU lobbying, the company continues to boycott the EU lobby transparency register. Indeed just last week The Guardian exposed Aspect Consulting for its role in assisting biotech lobby group EuropaBio in preparations for a public relations offensive to overcome public opposition to GM food. The plan was to recruit high-profile "ambassadors" to lobby EU decision-makers on GM policy. Leaked documents show Aspect Consulting claiming to have "had interest" from Sir Bob Geldof; the chancellor of Oxford University and BBC Trust chairman, Lord Patten; former Irish EU commissioner and attorney general David Byrne, "potentially" the involvement of former UN secretary general Kofi Annan and writer and campaigner Mark Lynas. All the celebrities mentioned have since denied showing interest. UK MP Caroline Lucas described the lobbying efforts as “insidious behind-the-scenes manoeuvring”.
The winners of the European Public Affairs Awards will be announced on November 9th at an event in Brussels.
Thursday, 20 October 2011
UK lobby scandal: lessons from Brussels
UK politics has over the last weeks been shaken by a lobbying scandal that led to the resignation of Defence Secretary Liam Fox. Fox allowed a close friend, Adam Werrity, access to government meetings at the highest level. There are strong indications that Werrity used his access to these meetings to promote the interests of undisclosed industry clients, likely including defence firms. Werrity acted as an advisor to Mr. Fox but had no official status whatsoever, which is a clear violation of the UK ministerial code.
The scandal has lead to wider questions being raised about Prime Minister Cameron's cabinet, who was elected on a platform that involved curbing the power of lobbyists. In particular it has led to renewed calls for introducing a statutory lobby transparency register. Such a register was part of the coalition`s June 2010 programme for government but appeared to have been stalled as a result of opposition from lobby consultancies.
Several Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have commented on the UK scandal. A fairly bizarre comment came from firebrand Tory MEP Roger Helmer who tweeted that the problem is not big business lobbying, but “those well-heeled, EU-Commission-funded environmental NGO”. It is hard to see how the UK scandal could lead to this conclusion! Liberal Democrat MEP Diana Wallis argued the UK could "learn important lessons” from the European Parliament and the commission regarding the introduction of a lobby register. "The European parliament now has a leading position amongst European national parliaments with its joint lobby register for the commission and parliament”, Wallis told Parliament magazine. "Alongside clarifying who they are and their policy interests, lobbyists also have to disclose an amount of financial information, although there is always room to develop this aspect further”, Wallis added.
The lessons to be learned from Brussels, however, are both positive and negative. Serious mistakes have been made by the EU institutions in the process of designing a lobby transparency system. The most fundamental mistake was to launch a register that is voluntary, making it optional for lobbyists to join or stay in the shadows. And instead of deciding upon a register that delivers a reliable and complete overview of who is lobbying and with which resources, EU decision-makers gave in to lobbying pressures from vested interests and created major loopholes. The implementation of the register and oversight was left to Commission officials with very limited political will to secure genuine and comprehensive transparency. The clear conclusion is that lobby registers should be designed to be mandatory from the start, with broad and clear disclosure requirements, alongside effective enforcement. Politicians should resist pressures from lobbyists to do something different.
But there are also lessons for Brussels to be learned from the UK. The Guardian newspaper this week reported that Cameron's ministers met with corporate representatives on 1537 occasions in the first 10 months of government. There were far less meetings with NGOs and trade unions, leading to the conclusion that corporate interests are given privileged access by the Cameron government. The Guardian analysis was made possible by a policy of pro-active transpareny introduced by the previous government. All UK departments are expected to publish online records of meetings with lobbyists. In practice there are numerous problems with the implementation of the policy (departments are too late with publishing the records, and some records are very imprecise), but it is clearly an important contribution to transparency around the role of lobbying in decision-making. The website whoslobbying.com makes the information available in a searchable format. The European Commission should introduce pro-active transparency around its meetings with lobbyists as soon as possible.
