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Picture the scene: a banquet for MEPs organised by arch deposit ammunition firms to explain the lengths to which their industries acquire gone to action alude emergency. On the bedfellow list, the ambiance abbot of Croatia, accepted holders of the EU’s alternating presidency, and Guido Bortoni, an adviser in the European commission’s action directorate. Nobody at all from civilian ociation or the NGO sector. In added words a absolute Brussels lobbying event.
Billed as “Oil and Gas and the Green Deal” this banquet took abode on 17 February, aloof a fortnight afore the actualization of the EU’s aboriginal anytime alude law. The meal was sponsored by the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP), which represents 29 of Europe’s capital deposit ammunition operators, including Total, S, BP and ExxonMobil.
According to the EU accuracy annals the IOGP spent €350,160 in 2018 lobbying in Brussels, so it can allow to a few MEPs out to dinner. The European Action Appointment (EEF) is the absolute organiser: it is headed by Jerzy Buzek, an MEP for the European People’s affair (EPP), a above prime abbot of Poland, a above admiral of the European embly and currently armchair of its industry ysis and action committee. The appointment boasts 82 accessory members, firms that pay “at least” €7,000 a year in ociates fees. Predictably they are all in the oil and gas sector.
The EEF affably angry bottomward a media appeal to appear an beforehand acquisition on 26 November advantaged “Gas: Driving the Action Transition”. “We do not acquire journalists at our events,” was the response. The accident was sponsored by Eurogas, the gas industry’s capital lobbying organisation, and two German firms, Uniper and Wintershall. An official from the European commissions DG Action additionally attended.
The European Green Deal, the commission’s €1tn plan to adapt the European abridgement for against the alude crisis, has prompted a annular of accelerated lobbying activity. “Since 2010, the bristles capital oil and gas corporations and their deposit ammunition antechamber groups acquire spent at atomic a division of a billion euros diplomacy admission at the affection of European decision-making,” claims a address produced by a affiliation of alude NGOs (Corporate Europe Observatory, Food & Water Europe, Friends of the Earth Europe and Greenpeace).
Such firms, their business founded on extracting deposit fuels, acquire an absorption in dabbling or asive behavior advised to abate the furnishings of the alude crisis. They accomplish abundant use of Brussels-based thinktanks such as the Centre for European Action Studies (CEPS). A anniversary afore the anew sworn-in agency presented its alude policies, CEPS hosted on 4 December, a “by invitation-only” accident on the Green Deal adjourned by Equinor and Fortum, the action bazaar leaders in Norway and Finland, respectively.
Firms are acceptable to accompany CEPS as aculated members. ExxonMobil, for example, pays €15,000 a year for this access. The thinktank has organised members-only breakfast diplomacy with guests such as Frans Timmermans, now EU abettor in allegation of the Green Deal.
Members of agency admiral Ursula von der Leyen’s aggregation acquire been the focus of adamant absorption from action industry and decidedly gas lobbyists for months. In the aftermost 10 canicule of January alone, Eurogas embly met six commissioners and admiral from departments for the environment, trade, budget, agronomics and bread-and-butter affairs. Each time the declared business of the affair was the Green Deal.
The action commissioner, Kadri Simson, will be the keynote apostle at this year’s Eurogas appointment on 19 March in Brussels. Six ociates of the ociation’s agents are accepted for admission to EU embly buildings. Eurogas spent €800,000 on lobbying in 2018 alone. “DG Action is actual absorbent to the gas lobby,” says Pascal Canfin, a Renew Europe MEP and armchair of the parliament’s ambiance committee.
The IOGP has been active too. On 17 December it met Ditte Juul Jorgensen, the arch of DG Energy, again in January two added European agency members, in altered directorates. The affair was of advance the Green Deal.
Similarly employers’ aculation Business Europe has apparent abundant absorption in the commission’s new diplomacy for the environment. Speakers at the federation’s anniversary acquisition on 4 March – the day the EU’s new alude law is actuality apparent – accommodate Von der Leyen in person, two of her vice-presidents and three commissioners.
Another agency of influencing European policymakers is to use lobbying firms. FTI Consulting is one of the best effective. Accuracy International ranked it additional for ambience up diplomacy with the EU controlling in 2018.
With 38 agents ociates accepted for admission to the European embly FTI billed Eurogas, again a new customer, amid €25,000 and €50,000 in 2018. Earnings from ExxonMobil, its additional better annual totalled €600,000 to €700,000. The aforementioned year it agitated out arcane ysis for Gas Infrastructure Europe. Measures for a Sustainable Gas Aculator Market, the consistent study, was afterwards acquaint and is still on the European commission’s website. The close has fabricated acceptable use of the abounding revolving doors accessible in Brussels. In 2016-18, for instance, Philip Lowe, afterwards nch DG Action (2010-14), was a chief adviser to FTI on accessible affairs.
Jean-Arnold Vinois is addition archetype of the revolving doors in operation. He is an action action adviser at the Jacques Delors Insute, a able-bodied accepted thinktank, but additionally an honorary administrator for action at the agency and a adviser at FleishmanHillard, addition big lobbying accouterments in Brussels. This close counts the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic) – earning it about €1m in 2018 – the gas antechamber Gas Naturally (€25,000 to €50,000) and Fuels Europe, addition oil and gas
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