International

This coming Thursday the European Parliament, on an initiative from the SP, will hold a debate with the European Commission on the mystery which continues to surround the Commission’s countless advisers. In practice it appears that it is easier for major corporations to advise the Commission via ‘expert groups’ than it is for small businesses, the trade union movement or consumer groups or environmentalist organisations. The Commission promised improvements and has adjusted the rules, but in my opinion the changes are still far from sufficient. Although in formal terms the Parliament has no power in relation to this, on Thursday we will nevertheless attempt to cast some light on these dark goings-on.

There are more than a thousand expert groups advising the European Commission, and they come in all shapes and sizes. Some groups consist entirely of civil servants from the member states. Others are populated by representatives of interest groups or ‘independent’ experts. Although officially these groups only exist to give advice to the Commission, in practice the advice given is often, without too many amendments, incorporated wholesale into actual legislative proposals. So these are powerful advisers indeed.

The SP has never been enamoured of all these external advisers. In the Netherlands we are trying to get rid of them, as advisory councils and consultants cost as a rule a great deal of money. The Commission does it differently. Experts receive only their travel expenses and accommodation costs and because the Commission prepares laws on many, often technical subject areas, this is actually an inexpensive way of accessing expertise. This policy has certain disadvantages, however. Major corporations can afford to provide professional lobbyists as ‘experts’. Small firms, the trade union movement and interest groups lack the means for this and thus tend to be behind the game.

On Thursday I will be joining other MEPs in asking the Commission to take far-reaching measures, stronger than those which they have taken to date. It’s good that there is now a more accessible website which lists all of the expert groups, but we need assurances that when any new group is established this will be announced on this website in a timely fashion, so that all organisations know about it. That isn’t at all the case as things stand. Every branch of the Commission has its own website for this purpose, making it a variegated patchwork. In addition, the Commission should ensure that every branch adopts the policy of DG-Sanco, the Directorate General for Health and Consumer Affairs, which argues that it conflicts with its rules of integrity to appoint so-called ‘independent’ experts if these have direct links with corporate industry. Lastly I would like to have more information regarding what precisely the expert groups do, and to see experts, professional lobbyists excepted, reimbursed for any preparatory work they may need to do.

If the commission agrees to these concrete proposals, we will have taken a step forward. Even then, however, I’d continue to keep a critical eye on the expert groups. Is it really necessary that there are so many expert groups in Brussels? And is it not also here the case that even if the groups were indeed more evenly weighted, and the experts were paid for their services, it would remain a lot more expensive to seek this sort of external advice than it would be to get it from within the Commission’s own services? In short, even after Thursday the Commission won’t be shot of the SP…