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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network. Welcome to the People Power Politics podcast brought to you by cedar, the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation at the University of Birmingham. Hi everyone and thanks for joining us. I am Liccia Cianetti, Deputy Director of cedar, and today I'm talking to Kenneth R. A researcher and campaigner at Corporate Europe Observatory, also known as CEO. So, Corporate Europe Observatory is an advocacy and investigative research group that has been working since 1997 to expose the extent of corporate lobbying in the European Union, the tactics employed by corporate lobbyists and their impact on public interest policymaking. The CEO regularly publishes reports and investigations on lobbying, including on policies to do with climate and environment, tech regulation, AI, food and agriculture, and many more topics. And they also published a few years ago a hack handy guide to the world of corporate lobbying in Europe called Lobby Planet Brussels. So I suggest that if the listeners go to Brussels, that can download it and walk around Brussels, also join one of the guided lobby tours organized by CEO. Now, Kenneth has been at CEO, if I'm not mistaken, since 2008. And this book, called A Europe of Capital, draws on CEOs work over the past almost 30 years to delve deep into how corporate representatives not only influence European policymaking making on a daily basis, but have over time inscribed their visions and their interests deep at the core of the European project. So the book is freely downloadable online and I'll put a link in the show notes for anyone who's interested. And today I will ask Kenneth to help me and our listeners to understand a little bit more about how lobbying works in the European Union, how it challenges democracy, and what we can or should do about it. So, welcome to the podcast, Kenneth.
- [02:02]
B
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
- [02:04]
A
Great. So let's start from the fundamentals. So actually, before I discovered the work of a CEO, I didn't know much about lobbying in the European Union, knew about the concept that it was happening, but I had no idea of the scale. So how many lobbyists are there in Brussels? Who do they work for? What do they do? So can you give us a general picture of what a normal day in Brussels look like?
- [02:29]
B
Right, but first, I mean, important to know the scale of the matter. We think there are somewhere between 30,000 and 34,000 lobbyists in Brussels. So they are people who are professionally engaged in influencing the European institutions on behalf of. Yeah, that's important to know. I mean, from the outset, a lobbyist can be someone who works either for a company, can be for a municipality or even an environmental group. However, in Brussels of the 30 to 34,000, the vast majority work in some form or another for big companies. So what do they do? I mean, their job is to influence decisions in the European institutions and they do that by intervening at all stages of decision making. So I mean, I think most will know the. The classical image of a lobbyist is someone who would go to the door of a politician, knock on the door, squeeze himself in or herself in, speak for a very, very long time, be very persuasive, and then at the end, hopefully for the lobbyist, the politician will have changed his or her mind slightly to the favor of whoever the lobbyist is working for. And that phenomenon is massive in Brussels. However, it's important to know that lobbyists are normally in place well before any proposal reaches elected politicians. So lobbyists are very involved in developing strategies of those who propose legislation. They work with the European Commission on a daily basis to develop new proposals for European laws. They often perform the role of advisors, you could say formerly they are called advisors in some of the capacities that they perform.
- [04:28]
A
So how do they get into the door? Right. I've read some of the numbers that you have in the book shows that the amount of actual lobbies that full time employed people for big companies has doubled or almost doubled in the last 15 years. So it seems like whatever they're doing it is working. But you also talk about this exper groups. So the idea that if there is a need to regulate a certain industry, the people that work in the industry will have the information that is needed. So how are these expert groups formed? What role do they perform? And is that the main way in which lobbies get in the door before the door is even visible to the public?
- [05:12]
B
Yes. How do expert groups work? I mean, how are they, how are they established? I mean they are all, most of them are established by the European Commission and most of them are there to help the Commission develop new proposals for changes to existing European laws or new European laws. So the thinking of, the thinking of the European Commission is this. If we are to legislate in something that concerns, let's say, big tech platforms, who are the experts? Well, some of the experts definitely work for the platforms themselves. So we often come across this phenomenon that the industry which the proposal for a new law concerns actually dominates the advisory groups or the expert groups established by the Commission. And that's very important to know about lobbying in buses, that it's, I mean, it's kind of a true side. There are two sides of the phenomenon. The first side is that lobbyists work with all their financial and political means to, to push open the doors of the institutions. But there's another. There's a traffic in the opposite direction, you could say. I mean, the commission is proactively trying to integrate corporate lobbyists in decision making. And one of the most obvious examples is the expert groups.
- [06:42]
A
So you already mentioned the tech lobby, so maybe we can go there to give a concrete example for the listeners to understand what actually happens then to a policy once all of this kind of lobbying is put into place. I cannot remember the figures, but it was a staggering amount of millions that have been spent by big tech companies in lobbying in Brussels. And there is also a podcast where CEO one of the episodes of the EU watch Dogradio. I'll also put a link in the show notes to that podcast that is titled something like that. There are more big tech lobbyists in Brussels than MEPs. So what's going on in the sphere of tech regulation? Of course, loads of people now are thinking about AI regulation and that's probably one of the reasons why so much money is going into lobbying EU decision making. So what do the lobbyists want and are they getting it?
- [07:35]
B
Well, I mean, the short version about what they want is that they want all the leeway that they can get to do to go about their business as they please. One of the main objectives of the big tech lobby in Brussels is to prevent the authorities from regulating their business in ways that will curb their profits or be detrimental to their business models. That's what it's been about for many, many years. And that struggle comes in various forms and shapes. At the moment, AI is the big deal. A couple of years ago it was competition policy last year and this year there will be lots of fights over content, moderation of the platforms that produce content. So yeah, I mean, that's basically what it's about. And they fundamentally, they use the same approach as any other lobbyist would do. First, they pay lots of visits to parliamentarians, to politicians, and they have developed a close relationship with the European Commission over the years. I would say when it comes to European or American big tech companies, they often fight the political system in courts as well. The big tech lobby in Brussels has been the biggest on several occasions in the past years, and we expect them to be so in the coming years as well. Because there is, I mean, big tech is one of the sectors of the future. And there's a very intense power struggle going on between those who want to regulate big tech and those who wants to give Big tech as much leeway as they can.
- [09:17]
A
So say there is a grassroots organization that wants to push for more and better regulation. How different is the access that they can get to policymakers compared to the access that the big tech lobbies can get?
- [09:32]
B
Very, very, very, very different. I mean, those are two very, very different scenarios. Being a big tech lobbyist or if you are, say, a data privacy activist, that puts you in a very, very different position than, than the corporate lobby groups. We've had incidents very recently where we've had very, very important consultations going on at the EU level, where the European Commission would typically let in everyone who would represent a big tech company and exclude those who over the years have fought for data privacy and digital rights at the European level.
- [10:11]
A
Do they have an excuse for that? Do they use irrational and say, well, this is about business, is not about rights, or like, how can they exclude certain, let's say, lobbyists from society and civil society groups?
- [10:27]
B
I mean, the excuse that we hear the most at the moment, I mean, the excuses have changed over the years, but at the moment the Commission is actually being very blunt about it. A typical explanation is that civil society groups, in this case digital rights groups, they're not affected directly by the regulations in question. And since they are not affected directly, their expertise is not valuable or doesn't count when the Commission is trying to reform the rules so as to give more, more space for, for big tech companies. In recent months, in the last year or so, the explanations or the excuses that we would typically hear from the Commission have been shed it in favor of what I would call a pretty blunt lack of interest in what civil society groups would have to say on the matter.
- [11:23]
A
So what were the excuses before?
- [11:25]
B
Well, the excuses before would be more technical. It would be more about how many organizations the Commission would be able to address. The Commission would forward examples of limited number of civil society groups that were indeed consulted, things along those along those lines.
- [11:48]
A
So in your book you argue that if I summarize it correctly, the problem is not only the number of lobbyists or the financial power, or even only the imbalance between the resources that the corporate interests are able to spend to influence policy and those at the disposal of societal interests, but the very fact that business and corporate interests have managed to embed themselves at the core of the European project, that they've become decision makers before even the democratic process or even the decision making process starts. So how did this happen? Has it changed over time, both in terms of what you've researched and in your Experience. I mean, you've been working in this sector for a long time now, and I guess this is the moment to bring in competitiveness as keywords that you use. You talk about the Europe as a competition state. So what does that mean?
- [12:42]
B
Europe as a competition state is a way of describing what the European institutions are meant to do first and foremost. It doesn't mean that everything the European institution do is about competitiveness, but it is the dominating theme and the dominating raison d', etre, you could say. And it's become that way through a process that happened in the 90s. In many ways, you can see it's still unfolding and it's still developing. But I mean, historically, the genesis is in the 90s, when the European institutions were still young or the European Union was still young, and back then it was seen. How it came about is probably seen, and that's the point I make in my book. It's probably seen best in the dynamic between the European Commission and a lobby group called the European Roundtable of Industrialists, which was a group that was actually supported when it was founded in the 80s. It was supported by the European Commission, and it became, you could say, the prime partner when it came to developing the European institutions for the European Commission and in part, for the main governments in the European Union. And in the 90s, what we saw was how the ERT, or the European Roundtable of Industrialists were very proactive in developing ways that the new institutions would function. So that when we came to the end of the 90s and a bit into the noughties, and that's when we could see the European competition state take. Take shape.
- [14:27]
A
So what does it mean in practice that given more power to the Commission compared to Parliament, is that kind of at the core of the democratic deficit of the European Union? Is that what lobbyists were lobbying for?
- [14:42]
B
Well, yeah, Yes. I mean, the corporate lobbyists have always been very, very fond of the European Commission. I mean, the European Commission is a body that is in many ways exempt of some of the democratic scrutiny that other institutions, institutions are subjected to. The European Commission is independent, and the European Commission is the institution that produce all proposals for new European laws and all proposals for amendments to existing European laws. So, I mean, once corporate lobby groups have developed a strong relationship, working relationship with the European Commission, they are in a very, very powerful position. So that's, I mean, I would say that's a. That's a key trait of what I call the European Competition state. It is this, the fact that that corporate lobby Groups have managed to create a bubble that is very, very difficult to penetrate and influence for other interest groups in society than covert lobby groups.
- [15:46]
A
So in the past years there were, you know, several scandals about not only lobbying, but also that as a door for open corruption in the European Union, like Qatar Gate comes to mind as a prominent one. And those, to me, they both revealed the extent to which lobbying is unregulated, but also there was a pressure to regulate it better. So has anything changed in terms of creating more guardrails against this extreme influence?
- [16:13]
B
Yes, some things have changed, but nothing like nothing at the level of ambition that we heard in the days after Qatar Gate. I mean, Qatar Gate was actually, I mean, I mean, in our daily work we're not super focused on the issue of corruption. And let me, let me explain why. I mean, it's not because corruption is not serious. It's because what we see is that in so many cases, corporate lottery groups can, can, can exert undue influence on decision making without the exchange of money. So that's why. But indeed, I mean, Katargate was really an eye opener because what we saw then was the, well, the Belgian police could produce big suitcases full of cash. And the reason why was because foreign governments too, in particular Qatar and the Moroccan government had been able to form a group with MEPs to influence decisions in the European Parliament in particular. So, I mean, there we had a very direct link between the exchange of cash and decisions made by the European Parliament. Of course, I'd say after such an incident, some things are bound to change. But the effect of these scandals, and I've experienced quite a few, after some months, they wear off a bit. For instance, I mean, at the time we were very happy to hear members of the European Parliament say that now finally, they had decided that all members of the European Parliament were to register the meetings they have with lobbyists in a register accessible to the public. That would mean that I would have been able to look up who was meeting with the conservatives at the moment about this or that issue. That was very, very good news for us. I mean, that would have been, that would have increased lobbying transparency in Brussels by a lot had that materialized. But after six, eight months, that idea sort of vanished quietly and fell into oblivion almost. So, I mean, the rules have been improved here and there on transparency, but I mean, things are working really, really slowly. It appears that it's mainly the scandals of the, of the size of Qatargate that push the European institutions to improving the rules. There doesn't seem to be Much of an incentive without these regularly occurring scandals.
- [18:46]
A
Yeah. And as you say, a lot of the routes to influence are actually legal, so probably the regulations wouldn't cover those. Is there a lot of revolving doors between industry and European institutions? That's a big issue here in the uk for example, are there better rules there about it or not?
- [19:08]
B
I mean, there are rules. I mean, sooner or later we'll come to the place where you ask me, I mean, has anything improved or what can be done about it? I've been in this game for 17 years now and rules have improved slowly and step by step. They're definitely not good enough when it comes to revolving doors. The place where we have been able to help the institutions improve the rules is at the level of the European Commission. The European Commission. I mean, it's normally when there's a new commission coming in and an old commission going out, lots of ex commissioners will join the ranks of business lobby groups in one form or the other. And most of them are allowed to do so quietly. Some are allowed to do it immediately, others will have to wait for two years. And sometimes, sometimes there are demands put to commissioners that there are some kind of lab groups that they cannot join until after a while. So I mean, what they have is a cooling off period of two years. In general, we think it's not enough in some cases. We think there are cases where the traffic from the Commission to lobby groups would simply be stopped. One example is when the president of the European Commission, but also some years ago, decided to join Goldman Sachs two years after out of office, he joined Goldman Sachs as an advisor on European issues. We believe that was a mistake. It should never have been approved. So yeah, I mean, there are rules, but it's still a big, it's still a strong phenomenon and it's not going away anytime soon.
- [20:56]
A
Yeah. So your work and the work of CEO more generally is showing that the current European Commission, so the second von der Leyen Commission seems to be particularly invested in that. The regulation agenda, the regulation spree. This is perhaps news to the UK audience because regulation, first of all in general is seen as something negative. We don't want regulations and has been presented as such in the general public and is seen especially was this narrative around the Brexit referendum about the EU having too much regulation. So of course regulation is actually environmental, social, health, labor protections, but they're not often presented as such to the public. So what is the story with deregulation now? Why is this happening that the Commission seems so keen on deregulating and why is this something that democratic citizens should be paying attention to, even though it seems like a dry subject?
- [21:56]
B
Right. So where does it come from, this idea to set a big deregulation campaign in motion? In our analysis, the current deregulation campaign, to trace it back historically, you have to look at the summer of 2022 when a number of corporate lobby groups got together to pressure the European Commission to change this course. They had competitiveness of European businesses as their main slogan. And their claim was that if we would not see change of style and change of emphasis at the European level, the European economy would suffer immensely. Now, without going into the arguments, why they. I believe, we believe that their arguments were false, but it had a huge impact on European politics. If we go Fast forward to 2024, that's when we had the European elections and that's when the new, the current term of European politics was opened. At that point in time, their views had gained prominence. Their views were absolutely dominant, not just in the commission that was elected, but among the European governments as well. So in the last half of 2024, what we saw was the European was European institutions pre for a new style of European politics that was to last for several years. So what's going on at the moment? At the moment we see that the European Commission is targeting all kinds of regulation. And I would definitely come out strongly in favor of regulation in this case. In our political universe, regulation is mainly about protecting the environment. It's about protecting social rights, it's about promoting digital rights. It's about a lot of things that civil society groups and citizens have fought for in Europe over the years. And all of this is potentially challenged by the new deregulation regime at the European level.
- [24:06]
A
So what do they define competitiveness? Because it seems like it could be.
- [24:10]
B
Anything, I think, I mean, any, any. Anyone interested in what the European Commission means by competitiveness should, should explore the website of the European Commission, because you will not find it. You will not find a clear definition of what competitiveness is. But except for this, competitiveness is about what corporate lobby groups are asking from us. If a particular lobby group is saying that this or that kind of taxation hurts our competitiveness, we will take it at face value. If, say, the European chemicals industry claims that ban on very toxic chemicals could be PFAs would be a big problem for their competitiveness, we will accept it as a matter of fact. So, I mean, that's it, more or less. I mean, competitiveness, I mean, you will not find it rooted in a strict academic exercise on definitions at all. It's a very loose and very political concept, you could say. And it's a concept that has really taken over the thinking of the European Commission.
- [25:22]
A
This is very interesting, if worrying, because also comes together with pressure from the US who have taken this kind of strong anti European tone in recent months. And the tariffs seem to be used as punishment, but also seem to be a vehicle for more pressure for deregulation also coming from there. Am I reading this wrong?
- [25:46]
B
No, definitely not. I mean, the Americans. You can find an article on our website that is about American demands to the European Union and it's all about European regulation. And that comes in as a second factor. I mean, besides on top of the pressure from European corporate lobby groups, there is the pressure from the Trump administration, for instance. I mean, there is a strong pressure from the Trump camp to weaken the already weak regulation of big tech platforms. There is strong pressure from the Trump administration to scale down on sustainability rules for businesses. There is strong pressure from the Trump administration to weaken European food standards. And the list goes on. And that at the moment is what we're looking at a couple of years where there will be this kind of double pressure on European regulation, both from the domestic level and from the international level.
- [26:44]
A
And there's one technical term that I wanted to introduce the audience to, they learned through CEO, which is the omnibus laws. So I think it's important because again, there is a lot of very technical discussions that go under the radar because they're technical, because they're boring, but then they have huge effects for citizens. So what's the story with the omnibus?
- [27:07]
B
The story with the omnibus is that the European Commission has been looking for ways to implement weakening of existing European laws. And they do that via so called omnibus laws. And omnibus laws is you can see it as a kind of a package. So you take changes of several European laws and you put it into one package called an omnibus law, which means then that you can have it all approved much more quickly than if you would have changed the laws one by one. So omnibus laws are supposed to make deregulation more snappy, so you can pass.
- [27:46]
A
One and then deregulate a number of different laws.
- [27:50]
B
You pass several changes of several laws in one big package, and then at the same time they're in the habit of skipping some of the usual procedures. I mean, normally, for instance, in the European Union, when you have a big proposal, you have to do an impact assessment, you have to do a report where you assess what will be the outcome of the changes that you're about to make that. They are skipping, they are skipping consultations with many stakeholders. They're dropping a lot of steps that used to be part and parcel of decision making in the European Union. And they do that because they're hell bent on deregulating as quickly as they can.
- [28:32]
A
So here we come to the part where I ask you what can be done? Right? So this paints a pretty discouraging picture also one where it's difficult to imagine as a citizen, what one can do. So is there anything that can be done by organizations, by politicians who are against this and by citizens?
- [28:54]
B
Sure, definitely, always. I mean, it may sound that way, but I'm definitely not a pessimist. And I believe that over the years, even my own small organization have scored many political victories. We rarely do it alone, but we always do it with others, almost always. And in this case, we are building a fabulous network of groups that set out to counter the deregulation agenda that we see unfolding. But what can be done? I mean, if we skip for a moment the individual political struggles that we're looking at, for instance, I mean, soon there will be a big fight over big tech regulation. But if we drop the specifics, just for a moment, what my organization has set out to do for some years now is to convince the European institutions that they have to reduce the interaction with corporate lobby. Sometimes we're able to take small steps forward, sometimes it's more difficult. But that is one of the ways that we can get to a higher level of democracy at the European level, that is, the challenge is to roll back the power of corporate lobby groups. I would add, and that's crucial to my book, the whole idea behind using the term the European competition state and trying to dig out the fundamentals about how the European Union works is to say this. We need to get to the point where we do not only look at the, what's just right in front of us could be a struggle over chemicals regulation, it could be about digital rights, it could be about salaries and social rights. But we need to come to a stage where we are also able to address some of the fundamental flaws of the European Union. By that I mean the European, the European Treaty and some of the ways that the European institutions work. And I, I've put out, I've, I've pulled out three or four different reforms that I, I think would be worth fighting for in, in the medium term and the long term. I, I don't think I can go deeply into them here, but it's just to say that to get to real change at the European level, you need to change the basic rules of the game as well. There is an inequality or there are flaws built into the European treaties that we need to fix in the medium term or the long term.
- [31:25]
A
Yeah. So institutional reforms that rebalance the power on EU institutions and the way they work and democratize them. So thank you very much for coming at the end here. I just wanted to ask whether there is any other project you're working on now, whether on some specific lobbying case or a follow up to the book.
- [31:47]
B
I don't have a follow up to my book plan actually, because the my book is getting new life from time to time. There was a German version out a few months ago, there may be a Norwegian version. So I mean, for now I'm still stuck with the old book, so to speak. But I mean, I produce stuff all the time that could become part of something similar in, in the future. At the moment, what I'm spending most of my time on is to uncover how business lobby groups feed into the European Commission's decisions on deregulation.
- [32:23]
A
So we'll be reading more on that. And this is the end of the podcast, but I urge listeners who are interested in knowing more about this to take a look at Corporate Europe Observatory website. They have loads of articles and they are I use them in teaching so those who teach can look at that as well. And their podcast is also great. So thank you so much, Kenneth, for joining us and thank as always to our listeners.
- [32:51]
B
Thank you.
- [32:52]
A
Thank you for listening to the People Power Politics podcast brought to you by cedar, the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation at the University of Birmingham. To learn more about our center and the exciting work we do on these issues around the world, please follow us on Twitter Cedar Bham and visit our website using the link in the podcast description.