A study on the composition and transparency of European Commission Expert Groups

Executive Summary (the rest of the report can be found here)

The European Commission’s Expert Groups play an influential role in shaping policies at EU level in the crucial early stages. They are involved in drafting and commenting on EU legislation covering awide range of policy issues, including, for example, energy and climate change, and the import/export of dangerous chemical substances. The composition of the Expert Groups, and the interests that are represented,will to a large degree, determine the outcome of the consultation. The input provided by such Expert Groups often forms the backbone of the Commission’s proposals and through a process
that often involves very little change, eventually become adopted as European legislation.(1)

For example, currently, Expert Groups controlled by lobbyists representing commercial interests are playing a key role influencing critical policy-decisions such as the EU definition of ‘clean coal’ (a possible ‘alternative’ in order to reduce CO2 emissions) and whether/how the EU should promote biotechnology or agrofuels.

So far, in spite of this crucial role, very little has been written about Expert Groups; their place in the decision-making process, their influence, composition and methods of operation.

It is clear from theCommission’s own Register of ExpertGroups that there are more than1,200 Expert Groups advising the EuropeanCommission, but the exact number is likely tobe far higher. The lack of transparency concerning their number, composition and meetings means that these powerful consultative bodies are able to operate away from the glare ofpublic scrutiny.

The Commission’s online register of Expert Groups has existed since 2005, but it fails to provide the names of the individual members and the organisations they represent, making it impossible to assess the balance in representation. The register moreover is neither up-to-date nor complete.

Therefore, concerned about improving the democratic quality of EU policy-making, ALTER-EU has conducted an analysis of a sample of 44 Expert Groups. The 44 Expert Groups were chosen based on a range of key policy areas identified by the ALTER-EU member groups carrying out the analysis as being of particular importance due both to the EU’s legislative role and the need for the wider public interest to be reflected in policy-making.(2) These areas can be categorised as environment, energy, agriculture, consumers, health, water and biotechnology. In testing the legitimacy of Expert Groups according to theirmake-up, the analysis only focused on Expert Groups in which industry was represented and excluded those composed of only government representatives.(3)

The aim of this research is to provide an initial indication of the extent to which the composition of Expert Groups in key public interest policy areas provides a balanced representation of concerned stakeholders, or whether lack of transparency has allowed for certain interest groups to dominate and thereby benefit from privileged access to decision-making processes within European institutions.

As most of the information needed for analysing these questions is not in the Commission’s register, nor anywhere else in the public domain, formal requests to the European Commission were made using the EU “access-to-documents” directive (1049/2001).

The aim was to obtain the membership lists, reports and meeting minutes for these 44 Experts Groups, data which according to the “access-to-documents”directive should be available to EU citizens upon request. So additionally, this allowed an assessment of the effectiveness of this directive as a means of providing the publicwith policy-related information.

Unfortunately, this experience was not positive. In total, information was provided on 29 of the 44 expert groups investigated, with full details provided for just 14 of the groups (see also table 1). In many cases, no explanation was offered as to why the missing data had not been provided.

While in 60% of the cases the European Commission released the names of the Expert Groups’ member organisations (25 of 42)(4), only in 43% (18 out of 42) of the cases were the names of the individual members released in addition to the organisation names. The Commission used a range of flawed arguments for withholding the names of Expert Groups’ members, including “commercial interests” and “personal data protection.” Both the European Ombudsman and the European Court of First Instance have last year rejected the Commission’s arguments for withholding lobbyist names and in unmistakable terms called upon the Commission to disclose names of lobbyist.

The Commission’s failure to provide us with the requested information obviously also constituted amajor hurdle for our research project, reducing the sample of expert groups whose composition we could include in our analysis.

Basing conclusions on these sample findings, two major shortcomings with the EU decision-making process emerge. First is a serious lack of transparency surrounding key bodies involved in decisions-making and a very worrying degree of secrecy with the Commission seemingly reluctant to provide full and accurate information on the nature, composition and workings of Expert Groups. The problems encountered in obtaining relevant information amount to a systematic failure by the Commission to be open and transparent.

Another transparency failure confirmed by ALTER-EU’s research is that the Commission’s online register of Expert Groups is seriously incomplete and outdated. To add insult to injury, some of the Expert Groups that are listed in the register do not actually exist. They are included because one of the Commission’s Directorates-General (DGs) asked for and got permission for establishing the group and a budget for its functioning, but the group was never actually established.

As table 1 shows, the composition of a significant number of Expert Groups in our sample proved to be seriously unbalanced. In a range of key public interest policy areas, Expert Groups appear to be dominated by representatives fromthe business sector. These findings raise serious concerns over the democratic quality of decision-making within the European Commission. On a number of pressing policy issues, such as biotechnology, textiles and climate change for instance, the European Commission is formulating European policies based almost exclusively on the advice of those stakeholders who have a direct commercial interest and whose judgment might not be themost objective ormost suited to serving the common good.

Despite covering only a small sample of the Commission’s expert groups, these cases of industry dominance are not only very serious in their own right: the findings are likely to be indicative of a broader problemwhich the Commissionmust take determined action to address. This could start by undertaking a broad review to identify which Expert Groups are controlled by industry (or by any other special interests), and result in dissolving Expert Groups with a seriously problematic unbalanced composition. Strong safeguardmechanisms against privileged access and unbalanced composition of Expert Groups must be developed. To help avoiding corporate capture of Expert Groups the Commission must provide full transparency around the creation of new Expert Groups and establishing an open and fair process for selecting Expert Group members.

In summer 2007, the European Commission on several occasions made clear its intention to improve transparency around the Expert Groups. For example, in June 2007, during the “third joint Parliamentary meeting on the future of Europe” EU Commission President Barroso said that a list of the organisations represented on the Expert Groups, as well as the names of the individuals that participate, would become publicly available in 2008.(5) This statement was repeated by EU Commission Vice president Kallas during a hearing in the European Parliament.(6) Such statements are certainly encouraging and need to be followed by swift action, not only to provide this basic level of transparency but also to prevent commercial lobbyists fromdominating the membership of Expert Groups.

It is clearly necessary, given the strong influence of Expert Groups, for the European Commission to make changes in response to the situation uncovered by this research. In order to adhere to the EU’s own declarations on ‘good governance’ and ‘participatory democracy’,(7)

ALTER-EU recommends that the European Commission acts immediately to:

1. Disclose on internet themembership and key documents of all Expert Groups;
2. Ensure full transparency around the creation of new Expert Groups;
3. Ensure an open and fair process for selecting the Expert Groups’membership;
4. Devise strong safeguard mechanisms against privileged access and unbalanced composition of Expert Groups;
5. Dissolve all Expert Groups that are controlled by industry or by any other special interests;
6. Conduct a broad review on the composition of all Expert Groups.

Table 1

Overview of the findings:

On the effectiveness of the Access to Documents Directive

• In 34% of all cases, the European Commission failed to provide any information about the Expert Groups;
• In 34% of all cases the European Commission only provided partial information.
• The Commission only provided a complete and satisfactory response in 32% of the cases.
• In only 36% of the cases the European Commission provided information within the prescribed 15 working days.
• In only 43% of the cases the European Commission provided names of organisations and individuals that were represented in Expert Groups.

On the composition of the expert groups (based on the scant information provided by the Commission).

• Over 25% of Expert Groups appear to be controlled by corporate interests:more than half of all theirmembers (including governments) are industry representatives.
• In 64% of the Expert Groups being studied, business interests appear to be over-represented: industry representativesmake up more than 50% of the non-Commission and non-government members.
• Only 32% of the Expert Groups sampled appear to have amore balanced allocation of stakeholders.
• One Expert Group (4%) was unbalanced in favour of NGOs.

Table 2:

The Corporate-Controlled Expert Groups revealed by the survey:

1. Competitiveness in Biotechnology Advisory Groupwith Industry and Academia (CBAG)
2. High Level Group on Textiles and Clothing
3. Supervisory Group of the voluntary commitments of carmanufacturers
to reduce CO2 emissions
4. Informing Consumer BehaviourWorking Group
5. Coal Combustion Clean Coal and efficient coal technologies, CO2 capture
6. Alternative fuels
7. Changement Climatique et Industrie

Notes

1 Between 1986 and 1995, 80%of the Commission proposals got adopted – Simon Hix, ‘The Political System of the European Union’, Palgrave 1999, p. 60
2 Corporate Europe Observatory, Friends of the Earth Europe, Food & Water Watch and Spinwatch
3 For more information about the methodology for our research project, see page 10-12.
4 Two out of the 44 groups investigated have never been convoked and never had any members. Consequently, we do not count them here.
5 See MEP Jens-Peter Bonde’s reaction to this announcement. http://www.bonde.com/index.php/bonde_uk/article/bonde24241
6 Discussion on the European Transparency Initiative in the European Parliament’s AFCO committee, 16 July 2007. See also: http://www.bonde.com/index.phtml?sid=487&aid=24241
7 The White Paper on European Governance (latest version: 25.07.2001) proposes opening up the policymaking process to get more people and organisations involved in shaping and delivering EU policy. TheWhite Paper promotes greater openness, accountability and responsibility for all those involved. The Commission underlines its intention to “reduce the risk of the policymakers just listening to one side of the argument or of particular groups getting privileged access […].”The importance of involving civil society organisations in consultation processes is explicitly stressed.