Three-quarters of declared EU lobby meetings with corporate interests

Three-quarters of high-level meetings between lobbyists and the European commission are with private-sector companies. Only 18% are with non-governmental organisations (NGOs), according to new analysis. Campaigners Transparency International have collected details from all the declared meetings with senior officials from December 2014 until mid-June this year, and compiled the data with additional information from the EU Transparency Register.

The data also provides a breakdown by portfolio and reveals that in some sectors nine out of 10 meetings are with those lobbying for businesses. The most active lobbying group is the pro-enterprise BusinessEurope, which has held 42 meetings and declared a budget of €4m. Google, which is also one of the busiest lobbyists in the register, has held 29 meetings with officials since December last year.

What are they lobbying about?

Climate and energy is the most lobbied commission portfolio, with 487 meetings having taken place on the subject. It is followed by jobs and growth (398 meetings) and the digital economy (366). Regional policy is the least lobbied subject, accounting for only 15 meetings, behind budget (19), home affairs and humanitarian aid (both with 27 meetings).

Corporate lobbyists’ dominance varies across these different portfolios. While in financial markets and digital economy, 90% and 89% of meetings respectively are with representatives of businesses, the spread is more even in both health and education.

Since 1 December 2014, commissioners, cabinets and director generals publish their meetings and will meet only with those entities in the EU transparency register, which it is currently voluntary to sign up to. Vice-president Frans Timmermans has been asked to put forward proposals for a mandatory register by the end of 2015.

However, much of the data on lobbyists’ activities is incomplete or missing. Of the nearly 8,000 registered lobbyists, 80% did not report a single meeting with a commissioner. This is partly because the current rules cover only the most senior EU officials – which in practice means fewer than 300 of the 30,000 working there – and 20% of registered lobbying organisations. The team overseeing the negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, for example, are not covered.

There are also some high-profile absentees from the voluntary register, including 14 of the world’s 20 biggest law-firms, all of which have Brussels offices. Eleven of these 14 are registered as lobbying organisations in the US, where registration is compulsory.

“Much of the information that lobbyists voluntarily file with the lobby register is inaccurate, incomplete or outright meaningless,” says Daniel Freund of Transparency International. “Over 60% of organisations that lobbied the European commission on the EU-US trade agreement do not properly declare these activities. On the broad reform package of financial services, many banks – including HSBC, BNP Paribas and Lloyds – fail to declare in the lobby register that they are active in this area.”

All of the data collected by Transparency International can be explored in an online tool here.