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EBS Factsheet Series - #4
The EC's dangerous liaisons with industry
The organisers of the European Business Summit claim that the EBS is unique in bringing together politicians and business, suggesting that the two groups are "operating side by side" without much contact at the moment - a bizarre statement in the light of the increasingly close and institutionalised liaisons between EU decision makers and industry. The privileged and often exclusive access of business to EU decision-makers is arguably one of the major components of the EU's democratic deficit and causes a systemic corporate bias in EU policy.
While the European Commission in the 1970's still treated large corporations with a great deal of skepticism, this attitude was in the following years entirely replaced by one of strategic partnership. Former Commission President Delors himself made no secret of working closely with large corporations to revitalise European unification (see also the factsheet on the ERT). Following the gradual transfer of decision-making power to Brussels, an army of thousands of corporate lobbyists has carved out their niche in the EU's decision-making process, enjoying high-level access to EC bureaucrats who share their ideological orientations.
The fruits of the labour of these corporate lobbyists (an estimated 10,000) is often revealed in detailed technical agreements and policies implemented by the EU institutions, but frequently major social and environmental concerns are marginalised as a result of this undemocratic process. Here follows a couple of concrete examples of symbiotic relationships between EU decision-makers and the corporate world:
- The EC worked closely with the Association for a Monetary Union (AMUE) to build support for the European Monetary Union, with its much disputed rigid monetarist design.
- The ERT-founded transport think-tank, ECIS, played an important role in the development of the EU's environmentally controversial Trans-European Networks (TENs) of new motorways and other transport infrastructure (with a total estimated budget of 400 billion euro).
- The ERT proposed and got the EC to establish a Competitiveness Advisory Group (CAG), a body with the mandate to recommend EU policy reforms to increase international competitiveness. The CAG consisted of a significant number of industrialists directly from the ERT and its proposals neatly mirrored the ERT's agenda for pro-business structural reforms.
In the EC's industry and trade directorates, liaisons with business are known to be routinely symbiotic by nature, but occasionally particularly disturbing examples come to the surface:
- In 1994, Industry Commissioner Bangemann established a working group on European telecommunications with six out of twenty members coming from the ERT.
- Former Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan in 1995 initiated a Transatlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) of more than 100 executives from major corporations in the EU and US, which were given the mandate to identify barriers to transatlantic trade and investment which they would like governments to deregulate. The TABD meets as a whole twice each year, but working groups are busy throughout the year, working closely with EC officials.
- Brittan and his successor Lamy have, in the run-up to the Seattle Summit of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), initiated the formation of new corporate lobby structures such as the Investment Network and the European Services Forum (ESF), which are to assist EU negotiators in shaping trade policies around corporate priorities.
The symbiotic relationship described above is facilitated by the phenomena of 'revolving doors' between the European Commission and business. Many Commissioners have a background as corporate executives, including active membership of corporate lobby groups, and after serving as commissioners they waste no time to return to their natural environment. While there was a great deal of controversy around Industry Commissioner Bangemann's switch to telecommunications giant Telefónica, such critical attention is exceptional, as exemplified by the complete silence around Trade Commissioner Brittan's move to become vice-president of investment bank Warburg Dillon Reed (subsidiary of megabank UBS) or Finance Commissioner Yves Thibault de Silguy's move to become advisor and board member of Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux.
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