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Raphael Minder 1485 words 18 January 2006 Financial Times (FT.Com) English (c) 2006 The Financial Times Limited. All rights reserved While prime minister of France, more than a decade ago, Michel Rocard had to confront anti-nuclear activists trying to stop France from testing weapons in the Pacific. But even the veteran French politician, now a member of the European parliament, was surprised by the lobbying he witnessed last year after taking charge of reviewing plans for a new European patent regime for software. During the European parliament's key voting session, a moat surrounding the Strasbourg assembly was the scene of an unlikely confrontation between anti-patent protesters in kayaks and patent directive supporters on a motorboat. "In all my years in the parliament, I had never seen lobbying like this, and certainly never seen it turn into a naval battle," said Mr Rocard. The patent plans, which MEPs eventually refused to endorse, highlighted the growing influence and resourcefulness of lobbyists targeting European Union institutions, particularly when key business interests are at stake. On the patent issue, for instance, companies across the technology sector were affected. An estimated 15,000 lobbyists try to influence EU policy-making, some 4,435 of whom are officially registered with the European parliament, which has 732 MEPs. The scale of EU lobbying activity is more akin to that of Washington than that of any of the EU's 25 member states. For example, the Dutch parliament has 150 MPs and 100 registered lobbyists. Executives have a strong interest in the effectiveness of the lobbying industry. Large corporations as well as industry associations operate lobbying offices in Brussels in the hope of putting their stamp on the legislative process. In recent years even companies based outside Europe have opened offices there - from the US, the list includes Microsoft, Procter?&?Gamble and General Motors. Recently, however, lobbying practices have come under review in Brussels and Washington. Last November, the European Commission launched a transparency initiative, seeking to improve the relationship between EU institutions and lobbyists and other non-governmental organisations in an attempt to reduce conflicts of interest and better monitor the use of funds. Next month, the Commission is due to launch a public consultation on lobbying, including whether to create a new register and a code of conduct, after discovering that only about 500 of the 15,000 Brussels lobbyists have a such a formal code. More resoundingly, the political scandal triggered by Jack Abramoff, a powerful Washington lobbyist alleged to have offered bribes to senior Republican lawmakers, has revealed serious flaws in the more established and regulated US lobbyingsystem. Many believe the EU has much to learn from the Abramoff scandal. Erik Wesselius, a researcher at the Corporate Europe Observatory, a privately funded pressure group campaigning for more lobbying transparency, says: "The recent American scandals demonstrate there can be excesses even where there is good lobbying disclosure. There might be similar scandals going on right now in Europe but we simply don't have the tools to know. Software patenting is just one of many legislative issues galvanising lobbyists and the corporations that fund them. Others include the controversial proposal known as Reach, designed to enforce stricter testing and labelling rules for chemicals. Few MEPs have a deep knowledge of these complex and technical issues, making the European parliament a particularly fertile hunting ground for lobby groups. Following the patent review, Mark MacGann, the president of Eicta, an association representing companies such as Siemens and Philips, said: "There are 732 MEPs but perhaps only 20 of them really tried to understand what this [patent] issue is about. Some MEPs argue that this state of affairs is normal for any democratically elected parliament whose members reflect the diversity of their electorate. Mr Rocard admitted that the software dossier had forced all MEPs to "go back to school for two years" to understand its difficult legal and technical aspects. Given such a knowledge gap and the impact legislation like Reach can have on industry, several MEPs complain they are over-exposed to lobbyists who bombard them with misleading information. Evelin Lichtenberger, a German MEP, says some of the lobbying over patenting was "absurd" rather than informative. "We got some very misleading letters that even said in future nobody would invent something without a patent ratification." Other MEPs take a more philosophical approach towards undesirable or excessive lobbying. Guido Sacconi, an Italian MEP charged with reviewing the Reach chemicals legislation, says: "It's true that -lobbying has got harder to control in this parliament and I wish some of the interest groups helped us understand the positive aspects and not just the negative aspects of rules like Reach. But we must also accept this situation as a normal manifestation of democracy at work." Some experts claim the parliament should equip itself better to deal with technical issues by increasing funding for independent scientific advice. One veteran EU lobbyist says: "The parliament hosts tons of meaningless seminars and is happy to spend ?145,000 ($175,000) a year on buying silly presents for its visitors, but it then argues that it cannot find more funds to help MEPs really understand issues that are central to their legislative role. There are signs of improvement, however. The parliament has recently created an annual budget of ?4.6m, giving its leading committees ?100,000 each to commission scientific re-search without having to rely on the lengthy and cumbersome process of requesting advice through the parliament's own scientific and technological options assessment unit (Stoa). Peter Collins, executive secretary of the European Academies Science Advisory Council, an association of European national science academies, says: "The advice machinery in a place like the UK is further developed, but I see the European parliament trying to move in a similar direction. "Given that Brussels has more lobby groups than London, you can imagine why a parliamentarian would really need good information there." Much of the MEPs' criticism is directed at powerful companies that finance lobbying associations. But some of the most effective EU lobbying is carried out by groups representing smaller companies and individuals, whose origins and funding are hard to trace. During the software patent debate, for example, lobbyists representing industry leaders such as Siemens of Germany and Nokia of Finland, which wanted stronger patent protection, came up against smaller businesses and individual developers worried that tougher patents would stifle innovation. Jan Husar, a 23-year-old software developer for the Slovak government, was among a group of demonstrators lobbying against the patent proposal last summer. He says his travel costs from Bratislava and all expenses in Strasbourg were covered by the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, an association representing 3,000 companies opposed to stricter patent protection. "My job depends on not having this legislation, so of course I care about this issue - but I probably wouldn't have come here if I hadn't been invited," he says. Perhaps the most insidious effect of increased lobbying has been to inflate the numbers of amendments generated by technical pieces of legislation. In the European parliament every MEP has the right to table his own amendments for a vote at committee level. For example, the recent plenary vote on the Reach legislation involved 1,039 amendments, of which 421 were adopted by MEPs. Neil Corlett, spokesman for the parliament's Liberal group, says: "Members are being deluged with information by lobbyists, particularly on technical issues, which makes it very hard for them to see the wood for the trees. "But at the same time many of those members want to be seen playing an active role, so they are then happy to endorse some of that information and come forward to table an amendment. The result is that we don't always have a very coherent voting process. THE ISSUES THAT STIR UP BUSINESS LOBBIES

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