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EBS Factsheet Series - #2
UNICE: Lobbying machine preaching free market fundamentalismUNICE (the Union of Industrial and Employers Confederations of Europe) is the official host of the European Business Summit (together with FEB-VBO, the Belgian employers association which is a UNICE member). A close look at UNICE reveals a powerful corporate lobby machine that leverages its privileged access to EU institutions to promote neoliberal marketisation of European societies while fiercely resisting binding social or environmental regulations.
Now consisting of 33 employers federations from 25 European countries, UNICE has been the official voice of industry in the EU since 1958. It is only in the last decade though which has seen it develop into the powerful industry force that it is today. It is an official partner in the EU's so-called Social Dialogue, where also the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) is represented. While generally being strongly in favour of the centralisation of decision-making to the EU level, UNICE flatly rejects European-level collective bargaining, which could strengthen the hand of the labour movement. More important for it than the largely impotent Social Dialogue is UNICE's close ties with the European Commission, particularly with what has been dubbed the 'bureaucratic-industrial complex': the highly industry-friendly directorates for industry and trade. Its privileged access in Brussels is forcefully combined with parallel lobbying by the national employers federations in the capitals of the 15 EU member countries. In addition to the 40 person staff in the Brussels headquarters, these business associations do the bulk of UNICE's lobbying through a complex web of policy committees and working groups. Over 60 working groups dissect every proposal, regulation, directive and article emerging from Brussels before spitting influential position papers back into the EU's decision-making process. For instance, UNICE has no less than seven working groups lobbying for the EU to stick to corporate priorities in its policies for the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
UNICE coordinates its lobbying with the other main voices in the corporate choir in Brussels, primarily the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT) and the EU Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham). Despite differences in strategy and working style, the ideological message of these groupings is largely identical: in the globalising economy, political decisions should be subordinated to the interests of industrial competitiveness. Improving the business climate, UNICE argues, should be the top priority of the EU institutions. Such a 'business climate' means accelerated privatisation, minimized public spending on social protection and care, reduced corporate taxes, labour market deregulation and full-scale trade and investment liberalisation. This agenda is often presented under the pretext of 'completing the Single Market'. Its free market fetishism causes UNICE to systematically resist proposals for new environmental regulations (such as on water quality, waste and chemicals) as well as environmental taxes, claiming that voluntary action by industry will solve any problems there might be.
UNICE is constantly looking for new ways to further institutionalise the predominance of international competiveness in EU decision-making. One tool is 'benchmarking', the quantification of all factors that influence the business climate in Europe, to allow for a purely technocratic comparison between countries and regions in the world. This concept is now actively used by the EC and was also adopted by the EU's recent summit on employment in Lisbon, Portugal. The main document for debate during the European Business Summit will be the 'UNICE Benchmarking Report', which was published a few weeks ago. The report wants the EU to use benchmarking to target "over-regulation", by which UNICE means measures that "slow down, create uncertainty or increase development costs." That "the field of biotechnology" is mentioned as an example shows that UNICE indeed hopes to undermine recent policy measures introduced in response to public opinion.
The European Business Summit (and the 'European Innovation Agenda' which is to come out of it) is the latest disturbing example of UNICE's continued crusade to consolidate the dominance of the corporate agenda at the expense of social and environmental priorities.
For more information on UNICE, see: "Europe, Inc. - Regional and Global Restructuring and the Rise of Corporate Power" (Pluto Press 2000), chapter 4: "UNICE: Industry's Well-oiled Lobby Machine", page 37-44.
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