UNICE, the European employers’ confederation, is “the official voice of European business and industry vis-a-vis the European Union institutions”.1 Established in 1958, and formally named the Union of Industrial and Employers’ Confederations of Europe, UNICE has a more reactive nature than the ERT. This well-oiled lobby machine actively attempts to tailor most proposals emanating from Brussels into its overriding desire for increased industrial competitiveness. UNICE’s official status allows it to maintain unhampered access to EU institutions.
UNICE, which is a federation of some 33 industry and employers’ federations from 25 countries, claims to speak on behalf of “millions of small, medium and large companies”.2 The President is François Perigot, (former head of Unilever France and board member of the Association for a Monetary Union AMUE – see chapter 2.5). Perigot’s predecessor Carlos Ferrer now presides over the EU’s Economic and Social Committee, and is also an AMUE board member. UNICE’s Secretary-General Zygmunt Tyszkiewicz was Managing Director of British Petroleum Tanzania and General Manager of Shell in Greece before he became Secretary-General of UNICE.
Whereas the ERT can be considered as a proactive lobby group, attempting to steer the overall direction of Europe, UNICE is more of a reactive body. Unlike the ERT and other more macro-policy oriented lobby groups, UNICE is obsessed with details. Its working groups dissect every proposal, regulation, directive and article that emerges from Brussels, and then spit a strong position paper back into the European machinery.
But UNICE’s more technical, responsive nature does not diminish the impact that it has had on a vast body of European policy. UNICE has built up strong relationships with all branches of the EU decision-making structure – Commission, Council and Parliament – and enjoys regular meetings on every level. According to Tyszkiewicz, UNICE gains regular access even to “the invisible part of the iceberg”, the Commission. “Nobody knows what’s going on there, but we are in touch. It’s a very open bureaucracy, the Commission, it is very approachable. And they feel that we can help them”.3
UNICE cooperates widely with other business lobby groups, and has also set up some informal lobby networks of its own: the European Employers Network (on social policy issues) and the European Tradable Services Network. Regular networking also happens within the ERT and the Transatlantic Business Dialogue. “This networking is very, very important”, explains Tyszkiewicz. “There may be many voices, but the important thing is that they are all carrying the same message”.4
Another significant difference between the ERT and UNICE is that the latter is an official, registered EU lobby group, and thus enjoys a certain legitimacy that for example the ERT does not possess. UNICE is careful to distinguish between itself and the ERT, which it regards with a mixture of admiration and scepticism. UNICE’s documentalist, Peter Kettlewell stresses that the two industry coalitions are “natural allies”, but that the ERT is more of a public relations body and not as representative as UNICE. His vision of the ERT is of “twenty or so” influential people who have special access to the ears of the Commissioners. Kettlewell admires the ERT’s “sexy” publications, noting that UNICE is much too busy for such glossy publications.5
Although the constituency of UNICE is huge, its Brussels secretariat is modestly staffed with around forty people. UNICE policies and positions are developed through an elaborate structure of policy committees6 and more than 55 working groups. Through these committees and working groups, the secretariat in Brussels can “mobilize a thousand people to help it do its work”.7 Although it doesn’t make policy, the Brussels secretariat plays a very important role in setting UNICE’s agenda: “We identify the issues, because we know the Commission’s plan of action. We know what the Parliament is doing, we know what the Council is doing, and we know what the big issues coming up are. So we feed that back to our federations”.8
The working groups, which are composed of experts from the various UNICE member companies, draft policy papers which are ultimately sent to the Executive Committee for approval. “Then it is our job, and the job of our member federations, to spread that policy around, to talk about it, to explain it, to present it to the political decision-makers”, says Tyszkiewicz. “Our member federations will use that policy paper to talk to their ministers in their member states”.9 This national lobbying is a crucial step, as the last word in the EU legislation process lies with the Council of Ministers. “After they’ve all been approached in the same fashion, the hope is that when they get together in the Council of Ministers to make the final decision they will take account of what business has been telling them”.10
UNICE’s policy priorities are remarkably similar to those of the ERT, with strengthening European competitiveness, completion of the Single Market, progress towards Economic and Monetary Union and benchmarking on top.
However, UNICE has reservations about the Competitiveness Advisory Group, and did not support the ERT’s original proposal in Raising European Competitiveness11 to form the body in 1994. “We felt very strongly that you needed an undiluted competitiveness message, because Europe was not competitive”, says Tyszkiewicz. “It was a serious situation. But we didn’t want the message to be clouded with a compromise between employers, trade unions, academics and politicians, which is what the CAG ended up to be”.12 Despite these reservations, Tyszkiewicz likes the content of the CAG reports. He even goes so far as to deplore the “lack of publicity and lack of debate in the Parliament”.13 Maybe in defence of UNICE’s official absence in the CAG he summarizes the work of the CAG as “an exercise carried on almost behind closed doors”.14
UNICE seems to have placed its hopes on the benchmarking group set up by Industry Commissioner Bangemann in late 1996. Tyszkiewicz even suggests that if this group were placed under the command of Commission President Santer, it could replace the Competitiveness Advisory Group.
UNICE is quite well-known within the Brussels lobbying scene, in contrast with the more elusive ERT. Within the environmental movement, at any rate, UNICE’s policies are not embraced. “Absolute monsters”, is how Brussels-based lobbyist Susan Leubuscher describes UNICE. “Their membership is huge, and they are present at virtually any discussion that takes place: on water, chemicals, waste and so forth. They take dreadful positions on packaging, incineration and recycling, and say that they consider clean technology a joke. They strongly push voluntary agreements, so that environmental policy can be determined entirely by industry”.15
How successful is UNICE in achieving its goals? Quite, according to Tyszkiewicz. “There are countless examples of legislation that was either avoided altogether or was quite seriously amended because of the work that UNICE does”.16 If success can be measured by the extent to which UNICE simultaneously influences EU legislation to the advantage of its members and thwarts the attempts of environmental and social groups to place their issues on the agenda, it could be said that UNICE comes through with flying colours.
1. UNICE, promotion leaflet. |back to text|
2. François Perigot, letter to Irish President John Bruton, 23 September 1996, p.1.|back to text|
3. Personal interview with Zygmunt Tyszkiewicz, Brussels, 18 March 1997.|back to text|
4. Ibid.|back to text|
5. Personal interview with Peter Kettlewell, Brussels, 21 February 1997.|back to text|
6. Economic & Financial Affairs, External Affairs, Social Affairs, Company Affairs and Industrial Affairs.|back to text|
7. Personal interview with Zygmunt Tyszkiewicz, Brussels, 18 March 1997.|back to text|
8. Ibid.|back to text|
9. Ibid.|back to text|
10. Ibid.|back to text|
11. ERT, Raising European Competitiveness, Brussels, 1994.|back to text|
12. Personal interview with Zygmunt Tyszkiewicz, Brussels, 18 March 1997.|back to text|
13. Ibid.|back to text|
14. Ibid.|back to text|
15. Personal interview with Susan Leubuscher, Brussels, 21 February 1997.|back to text|
16. Personal interview with Zygmunt Tyszkiewicz, Brussels, 18 March 1997.|back to text|