Daniel Hannan
Daniel Hannan is a writer and journalist, and has been Conservative MEP for South East England since 1999. He speaks French and Spanish and loves Europe, but believes that the EU is making its constituent nations poorer, less democratic and less free. He is the winner of the Bastiat Award for online journalism.
Brussels is run by and for lobby groups
By Daniel Hannan Politics Last updated: March 12th, 2010
Nearly two years after the European Commission introduced a register for lobbyists, only 40 per cent of Brussels lobbying firms have signed up (hat-tip, EUObserver). Forty per cent, that is, of the 286 companies that explicitly market themselves as Brussels political consultants. We’re not talking here about the in-house lobbyists of the big corporations, nor of trade and professional associations, nor yet of the lobbying-at-one-remove that can be undertaken through proxies, so as to avoid having to declare meetings.
Nor, needless to say, are we talking about lobbying by green pressure groups which, as we discovered earlier this week, often fund their activism with grants that have come from the EU. Nor yet about lobbying by the mega-charities, which also receive tens of millions of euros from Brussels. Include all these, and the register would start to look like a Yellow Pages.
Lobbying is not intrinsically wrong. Indeed, three of my oldest and dearest friends have become lobbyists, and I can’t imagine them ever behaving unethically. The trouble is that the Brussels system cuts out the voter, concentrating power in the hands of unelected functionaries and, to a lesser extent, anonymous Euro-MPs. Lobbyists, naturally enough, have filled the vacuum.
Perhaps the best option is to do a John Redwood: that is, to refuse to deal with any lobbyists, however benign their motives. This attitude is doubtless unfair to many wholly innocent public affairs people; but it avoids any appearance of conflict of interest. And here’s the thing: if you have a problem, you can write directly to your elected representative. Nine times out of ten, he or she will take up your case for nothing.
Tags: eu, European Commission
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