The revolving door in detail

The revolving door is at the heart of the close relationship between the EU institutions and Brussels' lobby industry, with as many as 50 per cent of staff who work at Brussels' biggest lobby firms having a background in one of the EU institutions.

As ALTER-EU demonstrated in a report earlier this year, a number of former European Commissioners have recently moved straight from public office into lobbying jobs, raising questions about potential conflicts of interest.

But less well-known is the phenomenon of officials working in the EU institutions, especially in very senior policy-making or decision-making roles, who also go straight into an industry or corporate lobby job, often to work on issues closely related to their former department. Such job moves, known as going through the revolving door, create conflicts of interest and allow the official to potentially abuse their inside knowledge of European decision-making and their access to former colleagues, for the benefit of their new corporate paymasters.

The evidence

ALTER-EU has documented more than 15 cases of senior EU officials moving through the revolving door. The EU institutions have rules to govern the revolving door, but the rules are weak and are not effectively implemented: between January 2008 and July 2010, only one official was prevented from taking up a new position, out of 201 applications. In the cases documented by ALTER-EU, many officials were allowed to move into lobbying jobs without restriction. In other cases, it was only following questions from civil society groups and the media that some restrictions were put in place.

The lobby industry

A number of Brussels-based lobby firms actively recruit from among the ranks of EU officials to bolster their firm’s prestige and claims of insider know-how, which can help their corporate clients achieve their EU policy objectives. More than half of the lobbyists at four well-known Brussels public affairs agencies have previous experience in the EU institutions.

Secrecy

The Commission is also far too secretive about the revolving door, refusing repeated requests, including from MEPs and from ALTER-EU members to pro-actively publish information about who has gone through the revolving door.

ALTER-EU demands

The revolving door in Brussels spins far too frequently and the authorities have failed to recognise that their failure to block it risks further undermining the independence, and democratic legitimacy, of the European institutions across member states. A review of parts of the staff regulations is already underway and is expected to finish in 2012. It is imperative that the issue of the revolving door is considered as part of this review.

ALTER-EU is urging the introduction of improved rules with:

• A mandatory cooling-off period (or ban) of at least two years for all EU institution staff members entering new posts which involve lobbying or advising on lobbying, or any other role which provoke a conflict of interest with their work as an EU official

• Tackling the loopholes in the current rules including the exclusion of staff on (temporary) contracts

• Scrutiny of all staff joining EU institutions for potential conflicts of interest. Where there is a potential conflict of interest between their old job and their new EU role, those persons must recuse themselves from such matters

• Ensure sufficient resourcing to be able to investigate and monitor revolving door cases

• Publish a full and updated list of all revolving door cases on EU institutions' websites