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By ELISA BRAUN
Tips, tales, traumas to @elisabraun or influence@politico.eu | View in your browser
BONJOUR dear readers. Let’s start with a very niche hot take: Publishing new transparency and ethics rules, guidelines or frameworks — whatever you want to call them — ahead of a new mandate doesn’t mean a great deal unless you actually go through with making those plans work. And many EU institutions, member states and political parties have failed to do that.
That’s what came to mind after looking at this lengthy report on ethical rules and post-mandate restrictions, published last week by the European Parliament’s think tank, which I’ve read so you don’t have to. Building on well-known cases like former Commission President José Manuel Barroso moving to Goldman Sachs or Commissioner Neelie Kroes’ coziness with Uber, it shows how revolving-door rules were mostly invented after scandals, not before them. It also comes to the conclusion that for all those times we raised eyebrows about questionable public-private transfers, “the issue was not the lack of appropriate ethical rules, but the lack of proper implementation of those rules.”
The EU can trumpet its ethics guidelines as much as it wants. But in the end, it’s about how you perform in the long run.
Today we’re talking about:
— Politics: The Left group’s new standards on integrity and ethics
— Pharma: European Medicines Agency’s conflicted conflict of interest rules
— Fights: Who’s behind an anti-Orbán campaign in the bubble
— Horses: How von der Leyen keeps hiding her equine passions
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NO MORE QATARGATE-LIKE BEHAVIOR, SAYS THE LEFT
NEW RULES: At a meeting last week, the Left group in the European Parliament adopted new “standards of integrity and ethics,” setting rules for its MEPs for the upcoming mandate as it wants to be “at the forefront of the fight for more integrity, transparency and accountability in public institutions.”
According to the document, obtained by our Eddy Wax, the “high standards” reflect the basic principles of the MEPs’ code of conduct on three main points:
1. Conflict of interest: MEPs should avoid situations that could lead to a conflict of interest by not “tabling parliamentary texts or amendments” and not voting on issues related to their conflicting interests. In case there was any doubt, especially after Qatargate, MEPs should “not take financial inducements nor instructions from corporate, financial interest or representatives of third countries.”
2. Side jobs: The group’s members must disclose their previous activities in a declaration that details past jobs or board memberships within three years of taking office. In addition to that, MEPs are not allowed to “engage in any paid lobbying activities” or take on any side jobs in profit-making companies. That also applies to non-profits, as “members of the Left in the EP cannot be remunerated for being members of boards of non-governmental organizations or associations.”
3. No gifts, no trips, no fun: The new code also requires they steer clear of having their travel and accommodation costs covered by outside actors “seeking to influence public policy” and stipulates that they should say no to gifts — or make sure they report them.
EUROPEAN MEDICINES AGENCY’S CONFLICTED CONFLICT-OF-INTEREST RULES
REVISE THE COPY, PLEASE. In a shock announcement on Monday, the European Commission ordered the European Medicines Agency to re-assess a cancer drug it rejected for an EU license, after a court ruling on its conflict-of-interest rules for external experts, my colleagues from Morning Health report. It’s quite a big deal because those experts have the power to influence whether a license is granted or not for new medicines in the EU impacting pharma companies’ revenues — while at the same time making life-changing decisions for millions of patients.
What’s this all about? The Commission in effect said that the EMA’s conflict-of-interest rules, er, might not prevent conflicts of interest.
Why now? This comes seven years into a legal battle in front of the EU’s top courts by the firm PharmaMar, which is pushing to have another assessment after its drug was rejected for a license. PharmaMar has always alleged that experts were biased in its assessment. The EMA has said it follows rules to avoid this.
Now what? PharmaMar can be sure its medicine will be reevaluated as the Commission’s decision overrides any decisions by the courts (even those yet to come), according to what Vincenzo Salvatore, partner at Simmons & Simmons and formerly head counsel at the EMA, told my colleagues from Morning Health.
But the big question is: Could this case law cause a domino effect for other companies who claim their drug was also unfairly judged by the experts brought in by the agency, my colleagues wonder. The EMA has been contacted for comment and has not responded yet.
EUROPE VS. HUNGARY AND PALS
TAKING ON ORBÁN IN THE BUBBLE AND BEYOND: European Movement International is bringing a pro-EU pep talk to the Eurocracy during the Hungarian Council presidency. EMI, an umbrella network that’s been advocating for European integration since before the EU came into existence, is running digital and physical ads in the Brussels bubble hitting Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen and other far-right leaders.
Targeting the bubble: During the last EUCO and the days after, EMI spent around €4,000 on Google ads appearing around Europe over 6 million times knocking Orbán, Le Pen and Geert Wilders for undermining democracy and EU values — and another €2,000 on programmatic ads that had 101,000 impressions specifically in the bubble.
Zeroing in on the Council: EMI applied geographic targeting with the Council building as Ground Zero. The aim was to “ensure that all the EU officials and sherpas, as well as the leaders themselves, were reached in the building during the summit,” said Sebastián Rodríguez, campaign strategist for EMI. “We use strategic communication methods that the far-right has been employing for a while, but we do so transparently and in full compliance with GDPR.”
More coming: Watch out for ads in the Brussels metro and bus stops this month and in September “to remind pro-Europeans the importance of our values and expose the far-right’s true colours,” said Rodríguez in an email to EU Influ. Some “‘guerrilla’ type tactics” are also in the works, he warned.
VON DER LEYEN KEEPS HIDING HER EQUINE PASSIONS
BEATING THE DARK HORSE LOBBY: Transparency NGOs are not going to let the issue of Ursula von der Leyen’s undisclosed meetings with the horse lobby ride off into the sunset. EU Influence author emerita Sarah Wheaton is back in the saddle with this update …
Once more around the track: As EU Influence has covered extensively, von der Leyen met multiple times with the European Horse Network, even though the equine industry lobby did not have an active entry in the Transparency Register. Von der Leyen did not disclose the meetings, either in her list of contacts with lobbyists or on her public agenda. The Commission told POLITICO that the interactions fell under the category of “interinstitutional communication” because the meetings with EHN were held in conjunction with the MEP Horse Group, an unofficial collection of equine-inclined lawmakers.
One trick pony: Corporate Europe Observatory and other watchdog NGOs complained to the Commission about the lack of transparency, but the response was more of the same: Von der Leyen was under no obligation to disclose the discussions because, wrote Commission Secretary-General Ilze Juhansone on June 10, they “cannot be considered to be lobby ‘meetings.’” Lobby meetings, she clarifies, are a “bilateral encounter … to discuss an issue related to policymaking and implementation” in the EU.
Calling horse manure: The NGOs have lobbed another reply at the Commission, noting that EHN explicitly described discussing the bloc’s animal welfare legislation with von der Leyen. Furthermore, they note, the MEP Horse Group isn’t an official Parliament intergroup, and isn’t supposed to do anything to create confusion in that respect.
Making hay: The Commission’s reply “creates serious uncertainty” about what the Commission president discloses, suggesting that neither the public calendar nor the lobby register “can be trusted as [an] accurate reflection” of interest representative interactions. “This undermines the credibility of the Commission’s transparency system.”
No more horsing around: The groups call for the Commission to update its ethics guidelines for the 2024 mandate to bar officials from meeting with unregistered lobbyists and “clarify that MEP-industry groups are considered vehicles for lobbying and do not represent the European Parliament.”
HEADLINES
— EIB’s Hoyer denies €1M corruption allegations (POLITICO)
— Immobilier à Monaco : Patrice Pastor, le vrai prince du Rocher (Libération)
— Europe is Quietly Debating a Nuclear Future Without the US (POLITICO)
INFLUENCERS
CONSULTANCIES
Grégoire Poisson, head of the Brussels office at DGA Group, has been named global head of public affairs at the same firm. Kieran O’Keeffe has been named co-head of the Brussels office.
Tuomas Tierala has been appointed managing partner of Kreab Brussels, succeeding Karl Isaksson, who will start as the CEO of Kreab Worldwide in October.
Flavia Chiavelli and Leonardo Veneziani have been promoted to consultants at Fourtold Brussels, where they will cover healthcare and tech policy respectively.
ENERGY
Michael Lewis has been elected Eurogas vice president, succeeding Annie Krist. Lewis is currently CEO at Uniper.
PHARMA
After five years as communications and media manager at the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group, Cécile Etevenot is moving to the European Confederation of Pharmaceutical Entrepreneurs.
Henrik Reimer, currently head of EU representation at Wirtschaftsrat der CDU, will be the head of the Brussels Office at Pharma Deutschland as of September.
FOOD
Mathieu Cleach has started as international trade manager at Pernod-Ricard in Brussels. He was previously public affairs officer at Bnic Cognac.
DIPLOMACY
Jens Godtfredsen, ambassador for migration at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, will assume a new position as Danish Ambassador to Colombia as of August 1.
Audrey Goosen, deputy permanent representative to the WTO, will start as head of atomic and research questions at the Netherlands’ Permanent Representation to the EU in Brussels.
Willem Van de Voorde, the Belgian ambassador to the EU, will stay in Brussels and become the country’s special climate envoy, he told my colleagues Barbara Moens and Camille Gijs. The Coreper II ambassador, who has just concluded the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU, will be succeeded by Peter Moors, the chief of staff of outgoing Belgium Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.
Special thanks to: The one and only Sarah Wheaton, Šejla Ahmatović, Eddy Wax, Helen Collis, Barbara Moens, Camille Gijs, my editor Paul Dallison and the Talking Heads.
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