European Policy Centre

EPC in Action

Corporate Europe Observatory report:

"We are action oriented and we believe that business must be more involved in public policies."¹

The Centre, as the EPC calls itself, was established in January 1997 by the trio of Stanley Crossick, godfather of Brussels lobbying;² Max Kohnstamm, former vice president of the Jean Monnet Action Committee; and John Palmer, former European editor of The Guardian.³ The EPC defines its mission as "contributing to the construction of Europe", and to achieve this it "encourages a debate among all significant interest groups and channels the results to policy-makers". It makes no secret of placing "special emphasis on strengthening the interface of government with business".⁴

The EPC's bias towards industry is well reflected not only in the composition of its advisory board, which together with the advisors' team helps the three founders run the Centre, but also in its membership. The Centre claims to include trade unions, but in fact the only representative is Emilio Gabaglio, secretary-general of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), well-known for its constructive approach towards neoliberal European Union policies.

There are no other representatives of 'civil society' involved. However, the board does include six European parliamentarians, five former directors-general and a vice president of the European Commission, journalists from newspapers such as Le Monde and the Financial Times, corporate directors from Philips and Mars, and influential industrialists such as Peter Sutherland (former European commissioner and GATT director and current chairman of British Petroleum and Goldman Sachs International); the former and current ERT secretary generals Keith Richardson ⁵ and Wim Philippa; UNICE secretary general Dirk Hudig, and Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa from the executive board of the European Central Bank. The EPC enjoys significant financial support from its corporate members such as ABB, BAT, BP, British Telecom and Solvay -- all members of the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT) -- and other large corporations such as Dow, DuPont, Philip Morris and SmithKline Beecham. In exchange, these corporate donors are provided services such as regular contact with decision makers.^{6 [1]}

People

• Peter Sutherland (President) Chairman, Goldman Sachs International; Chairman of BP plc

Max Kohnstamm (Honorary President) Former Vice-President of the Jean Monnet Action Committee; former President of the European University Institute, Florence Karel Van Miert (Vice-President) Former European Commissioner for Competition Policy Antonio Vitorino (Vice-President) Former European Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs David Arkless Senior Vice-President Corporate Affairs, Manpower Inc Stephen Badger Vice-President, Mars Incorporated Antony Burgmans Chairman of Unilever NV; Vice-Chairman of Unilever plc HE Dipak Chatterjee Ambassador of India to Belgium and Luxembourg and to the European Union Philippe de Schoutheete de Tervarent Former Permanent Representative of Belgium to the EU Stéphane Ducable Director of Ecternal Affairs, Microsoft EMEA Alan Dukes Director General, Institute of European Affairs, Dublin Gareth Evans President, International Crisis Group Piero Gastaldo Secretary General, Compagnia di San Paolo Xavier Gizard General Secretary, Conférence des Régions Périphériques Maritimes d'Europe Sylvie Goulard Associated Research Fellow at CERI (Paris); Teacher at Sciences Po (Paris) and College of Europe (Brussels) Craig Kennedy President, German Marshall Fund of the United States Erkki Liikanen Chairman of the Board, Finland's Bank; former European Commissioner for Enterprise and Information Society Tony Long Director, WWF European Policy Office Donald MacInnes Chief Executive, Scotland Europa Rory Macmillan Director, Government Affairs - EMEA, Nike Erika Mann Member of the European Parliament; Chair of Management Committee of Transatlantic Policy Network John Monks Secretary-General of European Trade Union Confederation Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa Former Member of the Executive Board, European Central Bank

• Robin Pauley President, European Affairs, BT Group
• Wim Philippa Secretary-General, European Round Table of Industrialists
• Gaëtane Ricard-Nihoul Secretary-General, Notre Europe
• Maria João Rodrigues Professor of Economics at the University of Lisbon, Member of the European Employment Task Force
• Witold Sartorius Co-ordinator of Programmes, Foundation for Economic Education, Warsaw
• Sir David Sieff Non-Executive Director, Marks & Spencer
• Luc Tayart de Borms Managing Director, King Baudouin Foundation
• Helen Wallace

Director, European University Institute, Florence Maja Wessels Senior Vice-President Government Relations, Honeywell Monika Wulf-Mathies Managing Director Policy and Environment, Deutsche Post World Net; Adviser to Germany's Chancellor; former European Commissioner for Regional Policy

Resources

1. ^. Quoted in "Crossing the Business and Political Divide", by Rory Watson, the European Voice 9-15 July 1998.
2. ^. Mr. Crossick, a British corporate lawyer who set up his lobby firm in Brussels in 1977, managed to add to the Maastricht treaty a 68-word paragraph worth US$1 to $2 billion per word in savings to the European pension industry. Without these words, pension funds could have been forced to equalize the pension payments they had made to men and women since 1957. Source: "EU: The Brussels Lobbyists and the Struggle for Ear-Time", by Charlemagne, The Economist, 14 July 1998. |
3. ^. Crossick, Kohnstamm and Palmer had earlier, in 1991, founded the Belmont European Policy Centre, which was the predecessor of the EPC.
4. ^. Web page: <http://www.europeanpolicycenter.com>.
5. ^. Keith Richardson is also special advisor to the Centre. Other advisors include Julian Oliver, former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce's EU Committee.
6. ^. Corporate members are divided into four contribution categories: bronze, silver, gold and platinum corresponding to annual 2,500, 5,000, 10,000 and 100,000 Ecu donations. Only founders are considered platinum, Mark & Spencer and Mars.
7. ^ CEO Part One: The European Policy Centre EUROPEAN THINK TANK SERIES, corporate Europe Observer, Issue 2, October 1998