The lobbyists that have taken Brussels by storm
Financial times, Thursday, January 19 2006 
By Raphael Minder

An army of 15000 'experts is advising the european Parliament on
highly complex legislation that affects business. Raphael Minder
investigates. 

While prime minister of France, more than a decade ago, Michel Rocard
had to confront anti-nuclear activists trying to stop France from
testing weapons in the Pacific. 

But even the veteran French politician, now a member of the European
parliament, was surprised by the lobbying he witnessed last year
after taking charge of reviewing plans for a new European patent
regime for software. 

During the European parliament's key voting session, a moat
surrounding the Strasbourg assembly was the scene of an unlikely
confrontation between anti-patent protesters in kayaks and patent
directive supporters on a motorboat. 

"In all my years in the parliament, I had never seen lobbying like
this, and certainly never seen it turn into a naval battle," said Mr
Rocard. 

The patent plans, which MEPs eventually refused to endorse,
highlighted the growing influence and resourcefulness of lobbyists
targeting European Union institutions, particularly when key business
interests are at stake. On the patent issue, for instance, companies
across the technology sector were affected. 

An estimated 15,000 lobbyists try to influence EU policy-making, some
4,435 of whom are officially registered with the European parliament,
which has 732 MEPs. The scale of EU lobbying activity is more akin to
that of Washington than that of any of the EU's 25 member states. For
example, the Dutch parliament has 150 MPs and 100 registered
lobbyists. 

Executives have a strong interest in the effectiveness of the
lobbying industry. Large corporations as well as industry
associations operate lobbying offices in Brussels in the hope of
putting their stamp on the legislative process. In recent years even
companies based outside Europe have opened offices there - from the
US, the list includes Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and General Motors.
 

Recently, however, lobbying practices have come under review in
Brussels and Washington. Last November, the European Commission
launched a transparency initiative, seeking to improve the
relationship between EU institutions and lobbyists and other non-
governmental organisations in an attempt to reduce conflicts of
interest and better monitor the use of funds. 

Next month, the Commission is due to launch a public consultation on
lobbying, including whether to create a new register and a code of
conduct, after discovering that only about 500 of the 15,000 Brussels
lobbyists have a such a formal code. 

More resoundingly, the political scandal triggered by Jack Abramoff,
a powerful Washington lobbyist alleged to have offered bribes to
senior Republican lawmakers, has revealed serious flaws in the more
established and regulated US lobbyingsystem. 

Many believe the EU has much to learn from the Abramoff scandal. Erik
Wesselius, a researcher at the Corporate Europe Observatory, a
privately funded pressure group campaigning for more lobbying
transparency, says: "The recent American scandals demonstrate there
can be excesses even where there is good lobbying disclosure. There
might be similar scandals going on right now in Europe but we simply
don't have the tools to know.'' 

Software patenting is just one of many legislative issues galvanising
lobbyists and the corporations that fund them. Others include the
controversial proposal known as Reach, designed to enforce stricter
testing and labelling rules for chemicals. Few MEPs have a deep
knowledge of these complex and technical issues, making the European
parliament a particularly fertile hunting ground for lobby groups. 

Following the patent review, Mark MacGann, the president of Eicta, an
association representing companies such as Siemens and Philips, said:
"There are 732 MEPs but perhaps only 20 of them really tried to
understand what this [patent] issue is about.'' 

Some MEPs argue that this state of affairs is normal for any
democratically elected parliament whose members reflect the diversity
of their electorate. Mr Rocard admitted that the software dossier had
forced all MEPs to "go back to school for two years" to understand
its difficult legal and technical aspects. 

Given such a knowledge gap and the impact legislation like Reach can
have on industry, several MEPs complain they are over-exposed to
lobbyists who bombard them with misleading information. Evelin
Lichtenberger, a German MEP, says some of the lobbying over patenting
was "absurd" rather than informative. "We got some very misleading
letters that even said in future nobody would invent something
without a patent ratification." 

Other MEPs take a more philosophical approach towards undesirable or
excessive lobbying. Guido Sacconi, an Italian MEP charged with
reviewing the Reach chemicals legislation, says: "It's true that
­lobbying has got harder to control in this parliament and I wish
some of the interest groups helped us understand the positive aspects
and not just the negative aspects of rules like Reach. But we must
also accept this situation as a normal manifestation of democracy at
work." 

Some experts claim the parliament should equip itself better to deal
with technical issues by increasing funding for independent
scientific advice. One veteran EU lobbyist says: "The parliament
hosts tons of meaningless seminars and is happy to spend €145,000
(£100,000) a year on buying silly presents for its visitors, but it
then argues that it cannot find more funds to help MEPs really
understand issues that are central to their legislative role.'' 

There are signs of improvement, however. The parliament has recently
created an annual budget of €4.6m, giving its leading committees
€100,000 each to commission scientific re-search without having to
rely on the lengthy and cumbersome process of requesting advice
through the parliament's own scientific and technological options
assessment unit (Stoa). 

Peter Collins, executive secretary of the European Academies Science
Advisory Council, an association of European national science
academies, says: "The advice machinery in a place like the UK is
further developed, but I see the European parliament trying to move
in a similar direction. 

"Given that Brussels has more lobby groups than London, you can
imagine why a parliamentarian would really need good information
there." 

Much of the MEPs' criticism is directed at powerful companies that
finance lobbying associations. But some of the most effective EU
lobbying is carried out by groups representing smaller companies and
individuals, whose origins and funding are hard to trace. 

During the software patent debate, for example, lobbyists
representing industry leaders such as Siemens of Germany and Nokia of
Finland, which wanted stronger patent protection, came up against
smaller businesses and individual developers worried that tougher
patents would stifle innovation. 

Ján Husár, a 23-year-old software developer for the Slovak
government, was among a group of demonstrators lobbying against the
patent proposal last summer. 

He says his travel costs from Bratislava and all expenses in
Strasbourg were covered by the Foundation for a Free Information
Infrastructure, an association representing 3,000 companies opposed
to stricter patent protection. 

"My job depends on not having this [patent legislation], so of course
I care about this issue - but I probably wouldn't have come here if I
hadn't been invited," he says. 

Perhaps the most insidious effect of increased lobbying has been to
inflate the numbers of amendments generated by technical pieces of
legislation. In the European parliament every MEP has the right to
table his own amendments for a vote at committee level. For example,
the recent plenary vote on the Reach legislation involved 1,039
amendments, of which 421 were adopted by MEPs. 

Neil Corlett, spokesman for the parliament's Liberal group, says:
"Members are being deluged with information by lobbyists,
particularly on technical issues, which makes it very hard for them
to see the wood for the trees. 

"But at the same time many of those members want to be seen playing
an active role, so they are then happy to endorse some of that
information and come forward to table an amendment. The result is
that we don't always have a very coherent voting process.''