My Diaries

This morning reading the latest post from the IDEO blog, I discovered with delight the “Worst EU Lobbying Awards” website. The website is organized by Corporate Europe Observatory, Friends of the Earth Europe, LobbyControl and Spinwatch and every year has to vote in order to award the worst lobbyists in the European Union, as well as the worst Green Wash. The candidates are selected by the organizers who then put the full case online, with supporting documents.

For example this year, candidates for Worst Lobbying in the EU are: BMW, Daimler, and Porsche for their full-scale lobbying offensive to water-down and delay the EU mandatory targets for CO2 emissions from cars; EU public affairs consultancy Cabinet Stewart for running the International Council of Capital Formation (ICCF) – this so-called ‘unique European think-tank’ is in fact a front group for US-based opponents of the Kyoto Protocol.

Are also nominated: Viscount Etienne Davignon, the European Public Affairs Consultancies Association (EPACA) and Repsol, all of them proudly acting in favor of highly unethical lobbying campaigns.

In the Green Wash category, which is the abuse of ecological arguments to improve one’s corporate image, the nominated are: Airbus for a series of adverts in which passenger jet silhouettes are filled with beautiful landscapes, pretending that their airplanes are green and clean; BAE Systems for promoting deadly weapons as environmentally friendly.

For the third consecutive year, ExxonMobil (known in France as Esso) is nominated for its action against climate change (previous years int the Worst Lobby category for continuing to fund climate change skeptic; this year in the Green Wash category because of its purporting it is reducing its greenhouse gas emissions while in reality its emissions are increasing). Also nominated: the German Atomic Forum and Shell.

At first I hesitated, but in the end I fell for Shell and the three car builders , but really it was a difficult choice!

According to WorstLobby.eu website, thousands of lobbyists roam the corridors of Brussels to have their interests heard by politicians, sometimes using violent practices like manipulation, destabilization or disinformation. The raison d’être for the ‘Worst EU Lobbying’ Awards is then to inform the public about the authors of such practices, in order to discredit and discourage it (if only…). “The awards also show the need for strong EU lobbying transparency and ethics rules. EU citizens have the right to know who is lobbying the EU institutions, who they represent, what budget they have at their disposal and which policies they try to influence” says the website.

As far as I’m concerned, this type of initiative is essential in our present economic context, where capital is sovereign and where corporate image is still a relatively important factor influencing stock markets, hence its economical success, hence the ethical choices of the corporate leaders. Too bad this website is not more well known! According to Spinwatch.org, their organization, which denunciates abuse from lobbies, has very limited resources. Obviously though, who would want to finance this type of organization? Still, in 2006, WorstLobby.eu’s second year, the website counted 27000 visitors during the voting period, of which 9400 casted votes. We shall hope this year will be even more successful! So help them make our best lobbyists famous: vote! (before November 24th). I’ll post the winners after the Award ceremony, on December 4th.