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By SARAH WHEATON
Tips, tales, traumas to @swheaton or influence@politico.eu | View in your browser
HOWDY. Welcome to EU Influence. On Wednesday, many of my fellow journos engaged in some rare public advocacy on behalf of our colleague, the Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich, detained almost exactly a year ago in Russia.
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Evan is just one of 23 journalists jailed in Russia on a list maintained by the European Federation of Journalists, which tracks detentions around the Continent.
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ON THE RECORD
“Representation literally is what the EU looks like to the outside world. If all the heads of delegation are mostly white men … it doesn’t look particularly representational for the population of the EU.”
— Karen Smith, head of the project Women in Diplomacy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. As POLITICO reports in this dishy article, there’s a pretty good chance that could happen.
THE HORSE’S MOUTH
URSULA VON DER LEYEN’S DARK HORSE LOBBYING: Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s love of horses is no secret. Her engagement with equine industry lobbyists, on the other hand, hasn’t been fully public.
No-show jumping: On at least two occasions during her mandate — most recently in 2023 — von der Leyen addressed the European Horse Network (EHN), a non-profit industry association, directly addressing EU legislation relevant to the industry. Yet the meetings, held in conjunction with the MEP Horse Group, appear neither on von der Leyen’s public calendar nor on her log of meetings with interest representatives. Furthermore, EHN hasn’t been in the EU lobbying database, a prerequisite for meetings with top Commission officials and EU lawmakers. Its Transparency Register entry expired in 2019, according to the LobbyFacts database and emails from the Transparency Register secretariat viewed by EU Influence. An active entry went live only today, following our questions.
Racing through the loophole: The Commission said von der Leyen had no obligation to disclose the meetings. If that’s true, we might have a playbook for stealth lobbying at the EU executive.
NOT JUST A HOBBY HORSE: From sports and betting to meat, transport, breeding and veterinary medicine, horses cover a lot of policy ground, accounting for 800,000 jobs and €100 billion in annual economic impact, according to EHN. Brexit made life particularly complicated.
“Horse transports were trapped in the long lines before the new boarders and stood many hours in the queue,” EHN Chairman Mark Wentain told EU Influence. “Animal welfare was at stake!”
Early and often, von der Leyen has gone out of her way to show that she cares.
First out of the gate: On Oct. 15, 2019, two weeks before von der Leyen formally became Commission president, she addressed EHN and the MEP Horse Group, with a speech “connecting horses to a sustainable future and as a companion for many people,” according to a writeup from one EHN member group. “For EHN this is a major step forward, as one of the main issues is getting horses on the political agenda and away from being consumer goods,” the writeup added.
From the horse’s mouth: “We share the same passion for horses,” von der Leyen told EHN at a November 16, 2021 meeting, according to a press release. “Horsemanship is a culture, a knowledge and is part of our future,” she added, before flagging agriculture policy and green tourism, NextGenerationEU, and the Green Deal as important opportunities for the industry.
Jockeying for attention: The latest meeting was June 8, 2023 — well into the Qatargate scandal and its revelations about sloppy adherence to Transparency Registry rules for top EU politicians. According to EHN’s writeup of the meeting, industry pros vented their concerns to von der Leyen about the upcoming review of the bloc’s animal welfare legislation. The Commission president sought to “reaffirm” her support, as EHN put it, and assured that their “needs will be taken into account” in the eventual legislative proposal.
Commission reply: Arianna Podesta, the Commission’s deputy chief spokesperson, confirmed von der Leyen’s participation in the meetings. However, she added, they don’t count as meetings with interest representatives that need to appear in the president’s log of lobbyist meetings.
Because the events at the Parliament were part of the MEP Horse Group — organized by MEP Hilde Vautmans — they count as “an activity where the Commission plays its classical ‘institutional communication’ role,” Podesta said. Podesta did not reply as of this morning to our follow-up question about why these events did not then appear in von der Leyen’s public calendar. (Von der Leyen notes meetings with Parliament President Roberta Metsola, for example, yet we found no record of meetings with Vautmans or the MEP Horse Group.)
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‘Absurd’: Olivier Hoedeman, a research and campaign coordinator with Corporate Europe Observatory, a watchdog NGO, called the Commission’s rationale “absurd.” Hoedeman, who has criticized the MEP Horse Group in the past as a way for MEPs to lobby on the equestrian sector’s behalf, noted that it is “not an official EU Parliament intergroup.”
YOU CAN LEAD A HORSE TO WATER… but you can’t make it register. And you can’t make politicians check if it’s registered either, apparently, before hopping in the saddle.
Muddy track record: “The task of EHN is to remain vigilant and to defend the interests of the equine industry,” Wentein, the network’s chairman, told members in 2021. Yet it hasn’t been so vigilant about keeping its Transparency Register entry active.
Scratched entry: According to the LobbyFacts database, EHN was registered from April 2014 to April 2019. It was removed “for failure to provide the obligatory annual update,” the Transparency Register Secretariat told Hoedeman of Corporate Europe Observatory in a 2022 email Hoedeman shared with us.
Hoedeman complained again about EHN’s absence to the secretariat earlier this year, and they replied that they had sent EHN a fresh invitation to register in April 2022.
An active entry went live only today.
EHN disputes timing: Florence Gras, an EHN administrator, told EU Influence that the long gap in EHN’s registration, as detailed on the LobbyFacts site, is “not accurate.” She said she could not renew the network’s registration in 2022 because the email address used to create the entry had been deleted. Gras said she therefore also lost access to any proof that EHN had been registered beyond 2019, and that she filed a new entry Wednesday morning, as a result of our inquiry. EHN has no paid staff, she noted; it’s run by officials employed by other organizations.
Details on the organization: EHN has clearly grown since 2017, when its budget was €8,000 supplied by 25 members. Gras said the budget now stands at €22,000, with 32 members. (Most of the organizations we linked to above, trumpeting their participation in EHN meetings with the MEP Horse Group, also do not appear in the register.)
RIDING IN TANDEM: The Commission argues that von der Leyen didn’t need to disclose her engagement with a Parliament group. Yet it’s not always clear when EHN and the MEP Horse Group act together and separately.
Horsing around: Wentein knew von der Leyen since well before she became Commission president; he recalled her presenting a German riding stallion at an annual equestrian festival in Aachen, which he was covering as a journalist. She’s a fan of his equestrian publication, Hippo Revue, he told EU Influence, and he personally invited her “on behalf of EHN” to the 2019 meeting that occurred weeks before her Commission mandate began.
Race to blame: The MEP Horse `Group and EHN “are not the same, but independent operating,” Wentein said in an email. “There are 2 different Presidents, and the members are completely different!”
Nonetheless, he and Gras said Vautmans, the Belgian Renew lawmaker in charge of the MEP Horse Group, had a major hand in inviting von der Leyen.
Blinders on: “As far as I was aware, EHN was in the Transparency Register,” said Vautmans, in an email to EU Influence. “EHN decides on the list of the external speakers for the meetings,” she added.
Finish line: Hoedeman dismissed the MEP Horse Group as a “lobbying vehicle for the European Horse Network.” In a text message to EU Influence, he added, “VDL describing her attendance as ‘institutional communication’ makes no sense.”
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(UN)CIVIL SOCIETY
EPHA TURMOIL DEEPENS: Alice Chapman-Hatchett, president of the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA), has left the organization in a sign of growing difficulties within the charity. Earlier this month, POLITICO’s Carlo Martuscelli reported how the health-focused NGO had hired a law firm to conduct an internal audit after allegations of nepotism and mismanagement. Now, an internal email seen by Carlo reveals that Chapman-Hatchett stepped down from the organization “with immediate effect.”
Mysterious departure: The email came from EPHA Director General Milka Sokolović, who doesn’t provide an explanation for the departure beyond noting that it was “due to private circumstances that are out of her control.” In that same email, Sokolović said that EPHA Treasurer Jean-Paul Zerbib was elected president after an extraordinary meeting of the board.
Early retirement: This is the second senior management figure to leave the organization in a short space of time. The previous treasurer, Claudia Marinetti, also stepped down from her role in EPHA, but she told Carlo that this was not related to the probe and that she had to “reprioritize [her] work.” Neither EPHA nor Chapman-Hatchett replied to a request for comment.
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INFLUENCERS
CIVIL SOCIETY
— End of an era: After nearly 17 years, Monique Goyens will retire as head of The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC). Agustín Reyna, currently director for legal and economic affairs, will become the next director general on June 15, with Goyens staying on to help the transition
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
— Marek Havrda, former Czech deputy European affairs minister, has joined the European Commission as principal adviser, member of the regulatory scrutiny board.
—Justine Belaïd has been promoted to assistant development cooperation (FGIII) at DG NEAR at the European Commission.
COMPETITION
— Bernd Meyring, partner in Linklaters’ Brussels office, has been promoted to the new global head of antitrust & foreign investment.
CONSULTING & COMMS
— Grégoire Gaonach is leaving the consultancy Political Intelligence to work on his own public affairs tech startup, PolicyMate.
— Duncan Lumsden, who’s been working with Acumen but, let’s be honest, is more beloved for his alter-ego as the Berlaymonster, is leaving the Brussels scene. He’s taking the role of chief content officer at the private equity news service Real Deals in London. Berlaymonster “is also coming under new mismanagement,” Lumsden tells us.
— Rud Pedersen Group opened a Rome office.
DIPLOMACY
— Maria Luisa Briguglio has been promoted to programs and partnership manager at the UK mission to the EU.
HEALTH CARE
— Jacqueline Bowman will step down from her role as head of policy at the European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO) at the end of May.
SUSTAINABILITY
— The Cool Heating Coalition formally launched last week with 10 NGOs and think tanks as full members. Davide Sabbadin is the chair and the European Climate Foundation is funding the secretariat.
AN UNUSUAL UPDATE: We’d like to alert readers to an update we’ve made to the headline of a newsletter we published back in July 2023. It’s now “Revolving door from health DG to tobacco tracking” — a headline that more accurately reflects the nature of Dentsu Tracking, a company that hired a former DG SANTE official.
THANKS TO: Carlo Martuscelli, Jeremy Van der Haegen and especially Ketrin Jochecová; web producer Dato Parulava and my editor Paul Dallison.
CORRECTION: An earlier edition of this newsletter misidentified the chair of the Cool Heating Coalition. He is Davide Sabbadin.
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