'The Commission says one in five expert advisors come from industry - will it tell us who they are and what they actually do?'

ALTER-EU’s report “Secrecy and corporate dominance - a study on the composition and transparency of European Commission Expert Groups”, published on 25 March, provided worrying evidence of the dominance of industry representatives on some of the European Commission’s Expert Groups.

The study was not and did not claim to be a comprehensive analysis of the composition of all 1200 or more Expert Groups, but looked at a small sample (44) of the more controversial groups. It found that industry representatives dominated some of these in ways which could be considered damaging to the public interest.

The study highlighted seven groups in particular because of the level of industry dominance. Earlier research had found many more examples. The study included Expert Groups on Biotechnology (20 representatives from industry, 6 research institutions); Alternative Fuels (29 industry, 12 research institutions and NGOs); and Coal Combustion (10 company members, 5 others) where environmental and social issues are given only marginal representation and commercial interests dominate.

Even if industry representatives account for 20 per cent of Expert Groups overall membership, as the Commission spokeswoman Valérie Rampi told reporters, that could still mean that industry representatives could dominate a lot of groups. Industry representatives do not sit on all groups – there would be no reason for them to. They sit on the groups where their business interests are at stake. ALTER-EU made it very clear in its report that in most expert groups there are representatives only from government and public agencies. It is the mandate of the corporate-dominated groups which is of key concern.

It is of course impossible to know if the 20% figure is accurate, given that the full details of all the groups are not included on the Commission’s register, and the register itself is out of date. Assuming the figure is roughly accurate – given that one academic study (van Schendelen, the in-sourced experts) estimated the total number of expert group advisors at 50,000, that would mean that some 10,000 industry representatives are involved in determining EU laws. But it is not in fact the exact number of industry representatives that matters – what matters is the impact they have on the Commission’s legislative proposals.

The real question though is not how many there are, but how many groups they control by making up the majority of the membership and what is the impact these groups have in the Commission’s legislative proposals. We could have 40,000 experts from civil society and academia – but if they were spread thinly across all the groups, they would not control them. Whereas if just 10,000 industry representatives were concentrated in 1000 groups, they could dominate them all (figures here are completely hypothetical).

And we must also examine the mandate of each of those groups to understand their importance. The 20% figure that the Commission uses to imply that industry plays a minimal role in Expert Groups doesn’t mean anything at all in practice. The public needs to know which actors are represented in which Expert Groups and in what percentage and what is the mandate of each expert group and the procedures followed.

According to the Financial Times, the Commission claims that the corporate domination in the Expert on coal combustion is explained by its technical nature (FT, 25 March). But this is effectively saying that only those with commercial interests in a certain �eld have the competency to give technical advice. This is a bizarre and undemocratic means of law-making – driven by corporate interests – and completely unaccountable to the public interest.

ALTER-EU believes that it is crucial that advisory groups on controversial issues such as biotechnology and clean coal should be dominated by independent experts – from academia or elsewhere – as well as a broader range of experts who can advise on environmental and social impacts.

The research also revealed a lack of transparency within the Commission when it came to revealing the membership of some groups. More than a third of information requests were ignored.

This cannot be justified.

How in a democratic system can it be legitimate for public policies and legislation to be developed in secrecy? The public has a right to know about the issues being
discussed and which
companies with individual commercial interests are being consulted on public policies. It has a right to know when commercial interests are being given priority over consumer protection, social issues and environmental concerns. Without greater transparency these issues cannot even be considered.

According to the comments given by Rampi in ‘EurActiv’, the Commission intends to provide details on “individuals who participate in their own personal capacity rather than as representatives of organisations” by this summer and later on ‘the number of bodies represented’ in each Expert Group. This is far different from the promises Messrs Barroso and Kallas gave last year, when they said that the names of the organisations and persons that sit in every Expert Group would be published. The Commission should publish the names both of persons and organisations participating in all the Expert Groups, and not just the ones that participate in a ‘personal capacity’. The Commission should not only give ‘the number of bodies represented’ but the specific names of all the bodies represented.

The Commission needs to clarify its intentions and should not deal with the issue as if it was playing for time. Indeed, the European Parliament is demanding far more than even Barroso and Kallas promised. In February, it called upon the Commission “to conduct a thorough review of the composition of its Expert Groups before the end of 2008 and to take action to ensure a balanced representation of interest groups in the membership of Expert Groups...”

The resolution also insisted “that the Commission must before the end of 2008 develop an open, transparent and inclusive process for selecting the membership of new Expert
Groups and to inform Parliament no later then February 2009 of the new selection criteria;” [(2007/2141(INI)) Committee on Budgetary Control,
Rapporteur: José Javier Pomés Ruiz A6-0010/2008]

ALTER-EU is in no doubt that the European Commission must do more.ALTER_EU is a coalition of 160 organisations concerned with transparency within
Europe – see www.alter_eu.org