The European Commission, the meetings with companies, and the corporate lobby bias

This post content is published by ALTER-EU, a coalition of over 200 civil society groups and trade unions concerned with the influence of corporate lobbyists on the political agenda in Europe

Executive summary / policy recommendations:

1. Lobbyists representing businesses and trade associations make up 75 per cent of all high-level meetings and more than 80 per cent in certain areas such as financial regulation or the internal market. yet the Commission has committed to deliver balance in stakeholder representation. We conclude that the only effective way to achieve this is by limiting the number of meetings with big business lobbyists and increasing access by other stakeholders, including civil society organisations.
2. After the largely successful introduction of the meeting ban at the highest Commission levels, ALTER-EU calls upon President Juncker to extend the ban on meeting unregistered lobbyists to all levels of the Commission as a significant proportion of lobbying happens with Commission officials below the highest level.
3. For almost all commissioners, there is a discrepancy between their published agendas and the lobby meetings registered on the Commission websites, suggesting many meetings listed in the agenda were not reported afterwards. All commissioners must publish a complete list of their lobby meetings in a timely manner.

More information:

• Who is meeting whom? The lobby meetings of the new European Commission, alter-eu, June 24, 2015. Full PDF.
• ALTER-EU writes to President Juncker re: corporate lobby bias, alter-eu, 4 th September 2015