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Totally dominant lobbies in a downgraded Europe – (part 8)

Barroso administration: Golden medal in serving interests

A research by the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO)

Through the course of the crisis, attempts by corporations and corporate lobby groups to influence EU policies have probably been more successful than ever, in part due to a close relationship with the Commission.”

Corporate Europe Observatory has gathered a lot of evidence over time and covering many different areas that shows how the Commission is easily captured by corporate interests. This report is an attempt to produce a condensed version of how the Commission has come to act on behalf of corporations over the past five years, focusing on climate policies, agriculture and food, finance, economic, and fiscal policies.”

8 - REFITting the rules to suit business

Key findings

More recently, REFIT (Regulatory Fitness and Performance Programme), launched in 2012, is the most significant current attempt to roll back regulation, and it seems that the Commission is now making serious progress on its agenda – to the detriment of the environment and labour rights. To spearhead the initiative, the Commission formed a 'High Level Group on Administrative Burdens', headed by German conservative Edmund Stoiber, to advise the Commission on the development of the initiative. While Edmund Stoiber himself was proved to have lobbied on behalf of the tobacco industry, the group as a whole raised a more general concern: that 9 out of 16 members represented big business interests.

The REFIT is seen as a major threat to workers’ rights and safety at work by, among others, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). In a campaign dubbed 'Rethinking REFIT' with the slogan, 'Working rights are not red tape, Mr. Barroso', the trade union body has gone to some length to prevent the REFIT agenda from encroaching on labour rights. But the Commission seems adamant and has, for instance, withdrawn a proposal for a directive on musculoskeletal disorders and the revision of a directive on carcinogens, considered 'the two key legislative challenges regarding workers’ health and safety' by the ETUC. In addition, the Commission has hinted it intends to exempt small and medium size enterprises from the scope of EU rules on safety at work, listed in documents as one of the top ten most burdensome EU laws.

The Commission’s REFIT programme is targeting environmental legislation as well, raising serious concerns among environmental NGOs. In October 2013, three organisations – the EEEF, the European Environmental Bureau and BirdLife – sent a letter to the heads of governments of member states of the EU, warning them against the intentions of the Commission on key pieces of environmental legislation, set to be sidelined due to the REFIT programme. In the letter targeting the Commission’s REFIT programme, the three organisations cited the Commission for threatening the 'withdrawal of proposals for directives on soil and on access to environmental justice'. Since then, the Commission has indeed frozen the directive on soil.”


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