To register or not – the debate rages

Date: 22/09/05

The guided tour of Brussels offered by Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) is not like other tourist trails. CEO, which believes there is a corporate conspiracy at work in Brussels, is not interested in art nouveau buildings but in showing anyone prepared to listen where it believes power resides in Brussels.

The stopping-off points on the CEO tour include 118 avenue de Cortenbergh, an office block that houses Hill & Knowlton, Burson-Marsteller and the US law firm Slaughter & May. Another stopping off point is the tree on Rue Wiertz by the European Parliament, which was donated by the Society of European Affairs Professionals (SEAP).

Since it published its tongue-in-cheek guide to lobbying in Brussels, CEO has provoked a quantity of reaction out of all proportion to its size. John Houston, chairman of EPACA, the professional association of lobbyists, describes CEO as "four people in an office in Amsterdam" but does not hide his irritation.

He blames CEO for a front-page piece in Wall Street Journal Europe which drew attention to links between his lobbying and amendments drafted by the Finnish MEP Pia Noora-Kauppi to the money-laundering directive. The piece painted Houston in an unflattering light.

Burson-Marsteller has run into accusations in the UK press and on the CEO website that it has supported patients' groups to raise awareness of particular illnesses and conditions, so that it can then get the support of pharmaceutical companies.

Jeremy Galbraith, chief executive of Burson-Marsteller's Brussels office, accuses CEO of "having no interest in letting truth or fact get in the way of [its] campaign against industry's right to lobby".

But CEO is not alone. An alliance has been formed for lobbying transparency and ethics regulation (ALTER-EU), whose supporters include Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and ATTAC.

Lobbyists have become a fashionable target for CEO and its allies. In turn, public affairs specialists are calling for NGOs to be made more accountable and transparent.

EPACA accuses CEO of "significant distortions of the truth" and describes CEO as "the front organisation which launched the campaign for stricter regulation", which, it says, sees the problem as excessive influence of corporate lobbying on EU decisions.

EPACA believes that the debate over transparency has been hijacked by "a campaign led by some radical anti-globalisation NGOs for new mandatory restrictions on lobbying". Houston complains that whereas Commissioner Siim Kallas originally questioned the accountability of NGOs being paid by the Commission to lobby the Commission, the group of NGO lobbyists seized on some of Kallas' "after-thoughts" to characterise the Kallas initiative as being about excessive business influence on EU decisions.

EPACA questions whether the system needs fixing: "In an environment where highly competitive lobbying creates a high probability that improper behaviour will be drawn to the attention of relevant authorities or competitors or the media, the general absence of substantive concerns or scandals about unethical lobbying is striking," it argues.

William Dinan, an academic at Strathclyde University in Scotland, is a member of ALTER-EU. He describes the focus on greater transparency as "long overdue". Soundings from diverse NGO memberships across Europe suggest, he says, that "the results of the constitution referenda in France and the Netherlands were a predictable outcome of various criticisms of the EU, which (crudely summarised) see Brussels as an elitist, opaque and unresponsive political juggernaut disconnected from the concerns and interests of ordinary citizens".

That, he argues, is the political context into which the debate over lobbying disclosure has to be put.

Dinan sees problems with voluntary codes of conduct, arguing that the memberships of EPACA and SEAP, which have such codes, are only a fraction of the lobbyists in Brussels. Those who want to breach such a code will not sign up, he suggests, whereas US experience shows, he says, that "mandatory registration can and does work".

David Earnshaw, managing director of Burson-Marsteller's Brussels office, disagrees: he believes that mandatory registration would force out "the little people" and that lobbying would become the preserve of professionals such as himself.

He has a different take on the political context too. "The more you regulate, the more it deters the little people from lobbying," he says. Whereas, he believes, what the EU needs after the French and Dutch referenda, is "as many people as possible active in lobbying".

Which is not, he suggests, what CEO wants: one of its leading lights, Erik Wesselius, was secretary of the Dutch campaign for a 'No' vote on the EU constitution. The CEO is, Earnshaw suggests, ideologically opposed to the EU.

Wesselius denies that he is anti-EU: "The fact that we are addressing European lobbying transparency shows that we want to strengthen and improve the democratic quality of decision-making."

Article reports on a tongue-in-cheek guide to lobbying in Brussels, published by Amsterdam based CEO (Corporate Europe Observatory), which provoked a quantity of reaction 'out of all proportion to its size'. Article also features other voices calling for more transparency and regulation of lobbyists and pressure groups in Brussels.

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