By Martin Banks - 20th January 2011
The commission has failed to tackle this problem
Paul de Clerck
A draft ethics code for former EU commissioners has been branded a "half measure" which will not end the "revolving door scandals."
The commission’s new draft code of conduct is designed to address cases where former commissioners exploit their inside knowledge and contacts by taking up lobbying jobs for industry.
But the campaign group, Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation in the EU (ALTER-EU), said the draft in its current form would not prevent commissioners from "going through the revolving door" in future.
A number of previous commissioners have been criticised following lucrative moves to lobbying jobs and an investigation is still on-going into the case of former commission vice president Günter Verheugen who now runs his own lobbying consultancy.
ALTER-EU's Paul de Clerck said, “This code will not stop the type of scandals that we saw last autumn, where former Verheugen and Charlie McCreevy, another ex-commissioner, took up lobby jobs with companies including RyanAir and the Royal Bank of Scotland."
He called on the European parliament to improve the code in order to "close the loopholes and make sure that all lobby jobs are banned for a period of three years."
He added, “The current rules allow commissioners to exploit their insider knowledge and contacts by accepting lucrative positions with industry.
"The commission has failed to tackle this problem in the new draft code, allowing former commissioners to still move into various lobbying jobs immediately after leaving office.
"The responsibility now lies with parliament to remedy this.”
Meanwhile, new rules governing the commission's 1000-strong advisory bodies have been branded by ALTER-EU as a 'setback' for transparency.
The ‘expert groups’ are powerful bodies whose recommendations often determine the shape of EU legislation.
The new rules were introduced at the end of last month and parliament and civil society groups have demanded that the commission ensures balanced representation and transparency.
ALTER-EU, however, strongly criticised the "lack of improvements on key issues such as preventing commercial lobbyists from dominating advisory groups and transparency around the work of these groups."
The group says the new rules are also "at odds" with the promises recently made by internal market commissioner Michel Barnier to re-balance the expert groups operating under his department.
Nearly 200 financial lobbyists sit in the internal market DG expert groups as advisors in a ‘personal capacity’.
ALTER-EU says the commission’s new rules "lack any form of safeguard against industry dominance of expert groups, with merely a vague statement mentioning that “commission services shall, as far as possible, ensure a balanced representation”.
