End EU Council sponsorship deals now!

Every six months, on 1 January and 1 July each year, an EU member state takes over the role of the EU Council Presidency. This is an important role: deciding which draft laws the Council will prioritise for scrutiny and making proposals on them, as well as representing all the other member states in negotiations with other EU institutions.

But almost every recent Presidency (with the recent exception of the German Government, July-December 2020) has accepted sponsorship for its Presidency from national or multinational businesses. This sponsorship can be for goods or services in kind (the provision of catering at meetings or events, vehicles to transport ministers and officials to meetings in country etc) or it can be in the form of cash payments.

Some Presidencies have offered corporations platinum or gold levels of sponsorship, although a lack of transparency means we have no idea what benefits are conferred (Romanian Government, January-June 2019). Other Presidencies have proactively advertised for sponsors, offering “priceless exposure, prestige and enhanced brand recognition for their services and products” (Maltese Government, January-June 2017).

While corporate sponsorship is always a problem, many of the businesses that Council Presidencies have signed deals with are especially problematic.

The Portuguese Government has accepted sponsorship from three companies for its current Council Presidency, including the distributor of Pepsi, Lipton, and Gatorade in Portugal (sumol + compal), and The Navigator Company, Europe’s largest paper products company which has been associated with monoculture plantations and forest fires in Portugal, and land-grabbing in Mozambique.

Meanwhile the Croatian Presidency (January-June 2020) accepted sponsorship from INA, an oil company, and automobile producers Peugeot and Citroën. For the Finnish Presidency (July-December 2019) it was BMW; and for the Romanian Presidency (January-June 2019) sponsors included Coca-Cola, Mercedes, and oil company OMV Petrom. The Austrian Presidency (July-December 2018) was sponsored by, amongst others, Microsoft and Porsche, while the Bulgarian Presidency (January-June 2018) accepted as many as 50 private sponsors! In fact this shoddy practice goes back to at least 2004.

Some of these corporations are major EU lobbyists, spending millions of euros a year influencing EU policy-making. It is absolutely clear why these corporations would wish to ingratiate themselves with Council Presidencies, member state ministers and officials, even if the full details of the benefits they receive are kept hidden from the public.

Council Presidencies receive some EU funding to cover the costs of running Council meetings, providing interpretation, and other costs. But Presidencies tend to organise additional, informal meetings, in the home country, and the costs of these are generally not covered by the EU. As a result, some governments argue that they need sponsorship as the “expenses associated with holding the Presidency are significant” (Portugal, January-June 2021).

Other governments have argued that purchasing rules required them to accept offers of sponsorship (Estonia, July-December 2017).

Meanwhile some governments see sponsorship as a chance to promote national brands to a wider (and influential) audience.

But EU member states have failed to calculate the “reputational damage” and risk of conflicts of interest which can result from such murky deals.

Outraged by the sponsorship of the Romanian Presidency by Coca-Cola in 2019, foodwatch made a complaint to the European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly who agreed that these deals provoked “reputational risks” to the EU and that guidelines should be put in place.

Meanwhile, Members of the European Parliament have also expressed strong concern about the “possible reputational damage and the risk of loss of trust” in the EU, prompted by such sponsorships.

In response to the European Ombudsman’s ruling, the EU member states in the Council have been discussing a set of guidelines to regulate corporate sponsorship.

However, the guidelines currently on the table are very weak and would not ban the practice, but simply demand greater transparency about it. In fact, it has been reported that the Portuguese Government is part of a group of member states (including the French Government, which will hold the Council presidency in 2022) which has been advocating for even weaker guidelines which would not mitigate the problem at all.

Now that the Portuguese Council Presidency has accepted sponsorship itself, attracting renewed criticism of the practice, it is time to take a stand and demand that Prime Minister Costa reverses position.

This is the easy bit!

The EU member states should agree to ban all corporate sponsorship of future Council Presidencies. The Council should make sure that all essential costs of Presidencies are funded by the EU budget, and member states should commit to paying a fair price for any services or products that they choose to purchase to supplement their Presidencies, in order to avoid any sense of sponsorship, favour, or conflict of interest.

The most recent Presidency, that of the German Government (July-December 2020), opted against signing such dodgy deals. Such an approach must now become the norm.

Such a policy would end, for once and for all, a long-term practice that has favoured corporate interests - and long been derided by the public and the media.