Elmar Brok

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Elmar Brok (born 14 May 1946, Verl) is a German MEP, a radio and newspaper journalist, and the Senior Vice President Media Development at Bertelsmann AG.

He's a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs; a deputy member of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs and the Committee on European Union Affairs in the Deutsche Bundestag; the chairman of the CDU district Ostwestfalen-Lippe; a member of the CDU Board Northrine-Westfalia, and the CDU Federal Board and the Federal Committee; the chairman of the CDU Federal Advisory Committee on European Policy; a member of the EPP board and the EPP-ED political bureau; the president of the European Union of Christian-Democratic Workers; a member of the Delegation for the relations with the United States of the European Parliament; the deputy chairman of the Transatlantic Policy Network Parliamentary Group; the co-chairman of the Transatlantic Legislators' Dialogue and the German-Hungarian Forum.[1]


Background

Elmar Brok is one of the European Parliament’s longest standing and most influential MEPs, having served for 28 years. From 1999-2007 Brok was Chair of the powerful Committee on Foreign Affairs and as a consequence was seen as the European Parliament’s “ambassador at large”.

Since the early nineties, Brok has been both an MEP and worked for Bertelsmann, the German media company. He is currently Senior Vice President Media Development at Bertelsmann. Although Brok has always disclosed the Bertelsmann connection, he has never declared how much he receives from the media group. His salary was reported to be 200,000 Euros a decade ago.[2]


Register of interests

Senior Vice President Media Development[3], Bertelsmann AG, Gütersloh - Transnational Media Corporation[4][5]


Conflicts of Interest

Many have highlighted the potential conflict of interest in having a senior MEP involved with the lobbying activities of a major media company. As the Financial Times puts it “few people could be in a better position to open doors to decision-makers.”[6]

Internal documents from the 1990s show Brok’s close links to lobbying by Bertelsmann. One memo written by Bertelsmann’s Liaison Office in Brussels talks about the company’s lobbying strategy and notes, “we have achieved that the initial wording of ‘cross-ownership’ restrictions are weakened.” It is signed by Brok.[7]

Brok’s role is complicated further by his inclusion on other pro-business pressure groups. He is Vice-Chair of the Transatlantic Policy Network’s (TPN) European committee. TPN is a powerful political / corporate network dedicated to influencing EU policy. Bertelsmann is a corporate member. Brok is also involved in the Transatlantic Business Dialogue (TABD), an elite EU and US corporate / state alliance. “Brok [on behalf of Bertelsmann] is TABD's European group manager on electronic commerce, an area where TABD actively works to avoid government regulations and most of all taxes and tariffs.”[8]

Brok has been accused of cutting-and-pasting the demands of TPN into a draft European Parliament resolution on EU-US relations in April 2004.”[9] The same year he met with European Commission President, Romano Prodi, to present TPN's then recently published set of recommendations designed to strengthen the transatlantic partnership between Europe and the US. One of the areas for special discussion was the digital economy, a subject in which Bertelsmann has an interest.[10]

Brok has also been active in promoting business interests more generally in Brussels. In January 2005 Brok, with other MEPs, issued two motions for a resolution on transatlantic relations.[11] Then in June 2005 he was one of three MEPs proposing an “enhancement of the transatlantic economic partnership”, which called for “reducing regulatory and other non-tariff barriers to transatlantic trade and investment with the goal of establishing a barrier-free transatlantic market by 2015”.[12]

In May 2006, Brok was the Rapporteur for a report by Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on “Improving EU-US relations in the framework of the Transatlantic Partnership Agreement”.[13] He also spoke on the subject in Parliament in January, May and June 2006.[14][15][16] In April 2007, he was one of 11 MEPs who put forward a motion for a resolution before the EU-US Summit. It called on “Presidents of the European Council, the European Commission and the United States of America to use the opportunity of the April 2007 EU-US Summit to initiate the negotiation of a new Transatlantic Partnership Agreement and to jointly commit themselves to a binding roadmap for achieving a barrier-free transatlantic market by 2015.”[17]


Opening doors for Bertelsmann

“Everyone in town knows that Brok is Mr. Bertelsmann,” Tony Robinson, a spokesman for the Socialist Group of MEPs told the International Herald Tribune in 2005. Brok replied that there was nothing incompatible in working for a big multinational while serving in the European Parliament. “I'm not a lobbyist,” he said. “I'm allowed to have a job. Hundreds of other Parliamentarians do it, why shouldn't I?”[18] This contrasts with his critics, who argue his main employer is Bertelsmann, and who see him as Bertelsmann’s top lobbyist in Brussels.[19]

The benefits to Bertelsmann of having an MEP as the Chair of such an influential Committee as Foreign Relations is obvious. By all accounts Brok was reluctant to give up his committee post in 2007. As the German Times reported in February that year: “In the end, Brok’s ambition annoyed even his fellow party members. ‘We all know that every post is assigned for an even shorter period of time than in national parliaments,’ one colleague said. Another sneered that Brok was attached to his large office, while a third speculated that Brok was worried ‘that he would no longer be worth the money that Bertelsmann is paying him.’ As senior vice president for media development [at Bertelsmann], Brok is actually the most important lobbyist for the company in Brussels.”[20]

Brok’s office declined to answer questions put to him on his outside interests.[21]


Resources


Notes and References

  1. ↑ Elmar Brok website.
  2. ↑ Hans Herbert von Arnim, A salary of 9,053 Euros for Members of the European Parliament? Undated, accessed 08 November 2008.
  3. ↑ Bertelsmann AG website
  4. ↑ Bertelsmann AG website, Country search
  5. ↑ Bertelsmann AG is active in 28 countries in Europe, 7 in South America, 7 in Asia, 2 in Africa, 2 in Oceania, as well as in the US and Canada. See the link on note 4 to see the exact list of countries.
  6. ↑ Financial Times, Batting for Bertelsmann, 24 September 1997, p13, cited in Too Close for Comfort? by Andy Rowell, Spinwatch, July 2008.
  7. ↑ Von Lutz Mükke, Der Parlaments-Broker, Message, 7 October 2005, p34-40, cited in Too Close for Comfort? by Andy Rowell, Spinwatch, July 2008.
  8. ↑ Corporate Europe Observatory, Transatlantic Business Dialogue (TABD), Putting the Business Horse Before the Government Cart, Briefing Paper, 25 October 1999, accessed 08 November 2008.
  9. ↑ Olivier Hoedeman, EU-US summit: free trade talks ahead? Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), 11 June 2004, accessed 08 November 2008.
  10. ↑ RAPID, “President Prodi met with TPN Members to Discuss Transatlantic Partnership”, 17 February 2004, cited in Too Close for Comfort? by Andy Rowell, Spinwatch, July 2008.
  11. ↑ European Parliament website, Motions for resolutions, accessed 08 November 2008.
  12. ↑ European Parliament website, Motion for a resolution, 01 June 2005, accessed 08 November 2008.
  13. ↑ European Parliament website, Report on improving EU-US relations in the framework of a Transatlantic Partnership Agreement, 08 May 2006, accessed 08 November 2008.
  14. ↑ European Parliament website, Debate on Transatlantic Relations, 12 January 2005, accessed 08 November 2008.
  15. ↑ European Parliament website, Debate on EU-US Transatlantic Partnership Agreement – EU-US economic relations, 31 May 2006, accessed 08 November 2008.
  16. ↑ European Parliament website, Debate on Transatlantic relations, 08 June 2005, accessed 08 November 2008.
  17. ↑ European Parliament website, Motion for a resolution, 18 April 2007, accessed 08 November 2008.
  18. ↑ Dan Bilefsky, “Lobbying Brussels: Its Getting Crowded,” International Herald Tribune, 29 October 2005, cited in Too Close for Comfort? by Andy Rowell, Spinwatch, July 2008.
  19. ↑ Maria Green Cowles, Who Writes the Rules of E-Commerce? A Case Study of the Global Business Dialogue on e-commerce, AICGS Seminar Papers, A Publication of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies The Johns Hopkins University, 2001, cited in Too Close for Comfort? by Andy Rowell, Spinwatch, July 2008.
  20. ↑ Susanne Geiger, “Too many Germans in high posts?” The German Times, February 2007, cited in Too Close for Comfort? by Andy Rowell, Spinwatch, July 2008.
  21. ↑ Too Close for Comfort? by Andy Rowell, Spinwatch, July 2008.
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