“Who is driving the agenda at DG Enterprise and Industry?” The latest report of The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU).
In order to ensure transparency on the public interest, the report calls on the European Commission to review the composition of its advisory groups.
As the ALTER-EU‘s paper points out, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) represent an insufficient 8% of all advisory groups, whereas the share of trade unions is a mere 1%. According with the report, such scarce participation of the organised civil society greatly undermine the transparency on policy decision-making.
“Two thirds of the European Commission Enterprise and Industry (DG ENTR) expert groups are dominated by corporate interests (or 32 out of 49). This fact makes DG ENTR the champion of corporate influence within the Commission.” These conclusions are the result of analysing four case-studies along the following lines:
- Security research in the service of the arms’ lobby;
- The sub-group on critical raw materials;
- European Business Organisations Worldwide – securing privileged access to the Commission;
- CARS 21: protecting the car industry from CO2 reduction targets.
At the report’s launching event last July 10 in Brussels, one of the paper’s authors noted that with these “expert groups’ power” there is a very real risk that industry lobbyists may capture whole areas of policy making at a European level.
– In this report, ALTER-EU put forward three conclusions/recommendations;
- DG ENTR needs to make major changes in the composition of its expert groups and follow DG Internal Market’s example to radically reduce the number of its corporate advisers whilst increasing engagement with civil society organisations, Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and trade unions;
- The Commission must implement existing rules on expert groups. A complaint on conflict of interest has already been submitted to the European ombudsman by ALTER-EU;
- A need for clearer rules.
– Press Release – Report’s Who’s driving the agenda at DG Enterprise and Industry?
– EPHA position on European Commission’s Enterprise and Industry Policy
