Who is really running the European Parliament?

All across the EU next May, citizens will vote in a new crop of politicians to the European Parliament who will make decisions on thousands of pieces of legislation that affect their everyday lives.

But who is really running Europe, and who is really making the decisions?

According to a study by Corporate Europe Observatory, politicians and the European Commission are increasingly doing the bidding of big business.

Expert groups that advise on the content of new rules are top-heavy with corporate interests, while the revolving door of experts moving between big companies, central banks, and political jobs is increasing, it says.

Last year the European Parliament refused to agree the budget to pay for these expert groups until they got an undertaking that the balance would change, but a year later very little has, especially in the key directorate generals of taxation, secretariat general and enterprise, according to the NGO group, which studied the 32 new groups and sub-groups set up in the last 12 months.

“The figures speak for themselves: Big business occupies two thirds of all seats not given to government representatives (66%), which is six times the number of seats for NGOs (11%), and more than 13 times the number for trade unions (5%). Despite employing two thirds of the EU’s workforce, 17 stakeholders representing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) make up 2% of overall group membership, with 33 times fewer representatives than corporate interests,” they said.

The commission has been sensitive to the imbalance, but in some instances has reacted by reclassifying representatives. For instance, Business Europe, to which Ibec belongs and which is the biggest business representative in Brussels, holds seats on 55 different expert groups but has been classified in the expert group register at different times as an NGO, a trade union, an association and an international organisation, but just once as corporate.

Other representatives are labelled as holding their seats in a personal capacity, when in fact, the study says, half of them are not independent. This is particularly strong in the taxation groups, where 90% of those sitting in a personal capacity actually represent corporate interests, the study says.

“The question is whether tax dodgers should be advising on tax havens, beverage companies on alcohol policy, or fossil fuel companies on climate change. … The Commission gives the impression of government by corporate lobbyists, or a ‘lobbycracy’,” says the Observatory.

Several proposals to help governments increase their tax take and lower borrowing costs are being examined at the moment. For instance, the commission says €1tn a year is lost to EU governments because big business and the very wealthy are not paying their fair share of tax, and they set up the

Platform for Tax Good Governance to advise it on resolving this problem. But apart from a tax expert from each government having a seat on the platform, 80% of the other 15 seats are held by tax advisers and big business interests, while there are four NGOs, such as tax justice, one academic, and one trade union, the records show.

Tax advisers from the big accountancy firms and their big business clients are unlikely to vote to increase how much they pay, says Corporate Europe Observatory, and are more likely to favour a model that does not support the European social system.

There is a similar situation in the expert group established to advise on an idea seen as a real solution to improve euro economies — a debt redemption fund and eurobills. This would unite the huge EU economy to help out one another. The commission’s expert group to advise on how this could work is top-heavy with bankers and representatives of big business. There are no representatives from the unions or consumers, or NGOs that would provide an economic view different to the one dominating the EU at the moment, say Corporate Europe Observatory.

While the commission has to rely on external expertise in areas where there is a deficiency, the Observatory says the World Hea-lth Organization’s international agency for research on cancer has found a new way to address this by banning those with potential conflicts of interest from their expert groups and instead inviting them as specialists to share their knowledge but excluding them from drafting text or voting.

In the US, President Barack Obama in 2010 banned all registered lobbyists from sitting in advisory committee as his administration is “committed to reducing the undue influence of special interest that has for too long shaped the national agenda and drowned out the voices of ordinary Americans”.

This situation is not confined to the European Commission — the result of big business lobbying in the European Parliament has been clearly illustrated with MEPs putting forward amendments in their own name that have been written by the lobbying industry employed by vested interests.

EU ombudsman Emily O’Reilly has declared war on the lack of transparency, especially in the European Commission on who exactly is influencing policy and especially on the “revolving door” issue.