European Public Affairs Consultancies' Association

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". It is based in the expensive area of Rue d’Idalie in Brussels.

The APACA was primarily set up in order to stem the tide of regulation on lobbyist in the european parliment. The APACA describes this as:"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 (Quaestors 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." This shows that the APACA has been set up to keep existing non regulated practices.

EPACA is co-ordinated by a little known lobbying company called Houston Consulting Europe run by a former UK diplomat. The fact that it currently (March 2005)has no website indicates that it is a paper 'Association' with one aim in mind: To resist regulation of lobbyists.

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 aone of the largest Nordic lobbying firm, orginating in Denmark. Interestingly Gavin Anderson and company (Sourcewatch profile) are no longer listed as members.