EU Commission to introduce more transparency to expert groups

The European Commission announced tighter rules for expert groups that influence EU legislation, saying it will develop a new conflict of interest policy for experts appointed in a personal capacity.

In addition, the selection procedure for experts will be more transparent, including an obligation – with some exceptions - to be registered on a transparency register.

The Commission also agreed in principle to make the call for applications for every expert group public, something which does not happen today.

The changes are in response to a review by the European Ombudsman Emily  O’Reilly, published in January this year.

However, a demand by the Ombudsman that all documents and minutes of expert groups meetings be made publicly available, was rejected. “Experts should be able to contribute freely to the work of groups, without any risk of external pressure,” the Commission said.

Pascoe Sabido, a researcher with campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory, said the Commission’s announcement does not go far enough. “The Commission is doing the politically acceptable thing rather than the necessary thing. I wouldn’t quite call it a fig leaf… but we’re going to find ourselves in the same place again,” he said.

Some critics say industry has too much influence on the policymaking process. In April, environmentalists stormed out of an EU shale gas group, complaining it had been taken over by industry groups which were using it as a platform to promote fracking. The panel was led by five chairmen; two representatives from the shale firms ConocoPhillips and Cuadrilla, two officials from ministries in UK and Poland which NGOs claims are pro-shale, and a director of IFP Energies Nouvelles.

Sabido wants a new law that defines the industry, academic and NGO balance. “The Commission is keeping the handbrake on. [It receives input from] more than 700 expert groups, that’s too much for civil society to keep an eye on,” he said.

Ensuring balance, “cannot be an exercise in arithmetic in relation to the number of experts present in each expert group,” the Commission counters. 

“[T]he Commission considers that it should not introduce a set of rather rigid definitions of ‘balance’ for each individual group, if at the same time it does not have full control over implementing such definition,” Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans, who is responsible for the Commission’s ‘better regulation’ brief, wrote in a letter to Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly this week.

The Commission’s official count of expert groups is 787, of which 18 pass advice on the EU Horizon 2020 research programme.

The review by O’Reilly pointed to, “The perceived imbalance in favour of corporate interests in certain groups and potential conflicts of interest of experts who participate in their personal capacity.”