Nominations are in for the least sort after awards in Europe

Worst EU Lobbying Awards 2008

Voting has opened for the annual ‘Worst EU Lobbying Awards’. The public are invited to visit this site, familiarize themselves with this year’s nominees and cast a vote for the most outrageous behavior. There are two categories, “Worst EU Lobbying” and “Worst Conflict of Interest”.

According to the organizers the idea behind the awards is, “to discourage controversial lobbying practices by exposing them to the public.” This is the fourth year the competition has been held and it promises to be a close race.

Candidates for Worst EU Lobbying

The Agrofuels Lobby
A group, including Malaysian Palm Oil Council, Brazilian sugar producers, UNICA and Abengoa Bioenergy, were nominated for their misleading campaigns to promote agrofuels as environmentally friendly.

The European Alliance for Access to Safe Medicines (EAASM)
EAASM describes itself as “an independent, cross-sector patient safety alliance, campaigning for the exclusion of counterfeit and substandard medicines from the supply chain.” In fact, EAASM is entirely funded by drug manufactures with an interest in preventing cross border sales of pharmaceuticals.

The European Business and Parliament Scheme (EBPS)
EBPS continues to take advantage of prime rent-free office space inside the European Parliament, despite requests to leave. The organization charges its members 15,000 Euros (US$19,000) annually to, “inform economic policy and legislation” on their behalf.

Gplus and Aspect Consulting
Both Russia and Georgia outsourced war propaganda in their recent conflict. These two Brussels-based lobbying and PR agencies were only too happy to take the blood money, possibly a new low for the PR industry.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA)
Aviation is the fastest growing source of CO2 emissions in Europe, but according IATA’s adverts airlines only contribute 2 percent to global man-made CO2 emissions. This figure dates from 1992.

Candidates for Worst Conflict of Interest

Dr Caroline Jackson MEP
Jackson is a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) dealing with environmental issues. She is also a £6000 ($9300) a year environmental advisor to Shanks, a waste management company.

Piia-Noora Kauppi MEP
In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported that Mrs Kauppi had assisted the banking lobby in watering down EU money-laundering rules and, “submitted amendments that borrowed word-for-word from the European Banking Industry Committee.”

She has since been headhunted by a big banking lobby group, and will start work Jan 2009. Meanwhile she continues to be very active in the European Parliament’s discussions on financial market issues.

Klaus-Heiner Lehne MEP
Lehne combines his role as an as an elected representative with being a lawyer specializing in EU competition and regulatory issues. He was one of a group of MEPs who tried to exclude “legal advice” provided by lawyers from parliamentary transparency rules.

Ex-European Commission officials Petite, Klotz and Kjølbye
Michel Petite, Robert Klotz and Lars Kjølbye were all high-level European Commission officials, influential in competition policy.

In the last 12 months they have all left the Commission for jobs with major law firms specialized in assisting corporate clients on competition issues.

Trade Director Fritz-Harald Wenig
Fritz-Harald Wenig offered to provide commercially valuable information to people claiming to be lobbyists working for a Chinese businessman. Unfortunately for Mr Wenig, they were in fact journalists working for the UK’s Sunday Times.

All voting must be completed by Nov. 30. The organizers, Corporate Europe Observatory, Friends of the Earth Europe, LobbyControl and Spinwatch, will announce the winners at a special ceremony in Brussels on Dec. 9.

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