Lobbycracy

Brussels, 25 June -  The EU Transparency Register, jointly launched by the European Commission and the Parliament a year ago today (Monday), fails to give a full and accurate picture of lobbying activities in Brussels, according to a new report by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (Alter-EU) [1].

In 1997, at the time of the EU Counter Summit from Below, four friends in Amsterdam set up Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and published the report Europe, Inc.: Dangerous Liaisons between EU Institutions and Industry. This first CEO report uncovered the powerful role of lobby groups such as the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT), in promoting and shaping an EU-wide free trade area (the single market), a single currency (the euro), and numerous other major EU projects and policies at the time. The report warned that the far-reaching influence of corporate lobbies over EU decision-making came at the expense of democracy and of social and environmental concerns. Fifteen years later, CEO co-founder Olivier Hoedeman takes stock.

28 March 2012 - New research reveals that the pharmaceutical industry lobby is spending more than €40 million annually to influence decision making in the European Union (EU) – of which nearly half is spent by drug manufacturers on in-house lobbyists.

According to these findings, civil society organisations active on EU medicines issues, on the other hand, spend a combined €3.4 million per year. With the immense disparity between the affluence of public interest groups and the industrial lobby, it becomes even more difficult to level the policy playing field.

Three chapters from Europe Inc: “Writing the Script: The European Roundtable of Industrialists”, “Polishing the EMU: The Association for the Monetary Union of Europe” and “Doing Business in Amsterdam: The ERT, UNICE and the Treaty of Amsterdam”.