European Public Affairs Consultancies' Association

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The European Public Affairs Consultancies' Association, also known as the EPACA, was set up on 28 January 2005. The EPACA describes its role as being, "a representative trade association for professional public affairs consultancies active in the EU marketplace, with a code for which member companies themselves take responsibility on behalf of their staff"[1]. It is based in the expensive area of Rue d’Idalie in Brussels.

Background

The EPACA was primarily set up in order to stem the tide of regulation on lobbyists in the European Parliament. The EPACA describes this process as follows:

12 years ago the PA consultancies came together informally and agreed a code of conduct for professional standards. The Chef de cabinet of the responsible Commissioner attended the launch meeting of this code and recommended it as a contribution to professional standards. Since then the Commission has published a data-base of signatories of this code, as information for its civil society interlocutors. The European Parliament (Questions and Secretariat General) were also informed of the new code and commended it to the extent that it was adopted as the basis of the code of conduct which is today Annexed to the Parliament’s rules of procedure and required to be signed by all applicants for permanent visitor passes to the Parliament.[2] This shows that the APACA has been set up to keep existing non regulated practices.

Activities

EPACA was coordinated by a little known lobbying company called Houston Consulting Europe run by its founding chairman and former UK diplomat, John Houston, who now works for Kreab Gavin Anderson. [3]

On March 16, 2005, EPACA responded to the enquiries of Corporate Europe Observatory, a public interest group, monitoring corporate lobbying with a letter in which it refused to provide details of its operations.

EPACA's website (www.epaca.org) was registered on the 26 April 2005. Full registration details from www.whois.net below. The site is registered to Jeremy Miller, a 'freelance corporate and political consultant, writer and website developer', according to his website millerassoc.co.uk. The website discloses that EPACA now has an additional six members since its launch in March these are mostly smaller players in the lobbying market. EPACA continues to represent mainly the big lobbying groups most of which are owned by the big three communications Trans National Corporations WPP, Interpublic and Omnicom. New members include: Athenora Consulting, EACON - European Affairs Consulting Group, Kern European Affairs, Kreab AB, Policy Action and Pristop. Kreab is perhaps the most significant, being one of the largest Nordic lobbying firms, originating in Denmark. Interestingly Anderson and company[4] are no longer listed as members.

Members

At 01.03.05 were :

Registration details for the EPACA website

Domain ID:D106170161-LROR

Domain Name:EPACA.ORG

Created On:26-Apr-2005 23:06:06 UTCLast

Updated On:26-Jun-2005 04:01:00 UTC

Expiration Date:26-Apr-2010 23:06:06 TC

Sponsoring Registrar:Tucows Inc. (R11-LROR)

Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED

Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED

Registrant ID:tu4005jlAsULi1s9

Registrant Name:Jeremy Miller

Registrant Organization:EPACA

Registrant Street1:3 Melody Road

Registrant Street2:

Registrant Street3:

Registrant City:Wandsworth

Registrant State/Province:London

Registrant Postal Code:SW182QW

Registrant Country:GB

Registrant Phone:+44.2088743650

Registrant Phone Ext.:

Registrant FAX:

Registrant FAX Ext.:

Registrant Email:jeremy_miller@btconnect.com

Notes

  1. ↑ EPACAQuestions and Answers about the EPACA EPACA website(accessed 16 Febuary 2010)
  2. ↑ EPACA Questions and Answers about the EPACA EPACA website(accessed 16 February 2010)
  3. ↑ Our team, Kreab Gavin Anderson, accessed 16 March 2010
  4. ↑ See also Sourcewatch profile,
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