The lobby-tomy 3: who are lobbying?
| 23 Mar 2016: posted by the editor - Features, Internet news, Europe, European Union | |
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By Floris Kreiken, Bits of Freedom The new European data protection regulation probably is the most lobbied piece of legislation thus far because the subject is very important and touches upon almost every aspect of our daily lives and almost every business. Therefore Bits of Freedom used the Dutch freedom of information act to ask the government to publish all the lobby documents they received on this new law. We published these documents on the Bits of Freedom website with our analysis in a series of blogs. Which parties lobby? What do they want? What does that mean for you? We have now translated these nine blogs into English for the EDRi-gram. This is part 3. Authority and representativity Also, In an email to the ministry of justice, it becomes apparent that the Inretail association acts on behalf of 6.000 shopkeepers and 16.000 shops in the “non-food” sector. This sector entails “living and fashion, shoes and sports.” These aren't just random facts. This “number-dropping” has a specific aim: claiming authority and representativity to convince policy makers. Many parties do this to underline the importance of their position and arguments. In Brussels, this is particularly important: there are many organizations that act on behalf of an entire sector on a European level. Insurance Europe for example acts on behalf of the insurance sector in the different member states. Access The power of coalitions Take a look at the email from Ericsson to the Dutch permanent representation to the EU for example, which announces wonderful news in a lobby document: a new coalition has been started that contains different companies from different sectors. And this coalition is very important: “With an aggregated turnover of over € 100 billion and some 520,000 employees worldwide, the Coalition members’ considerable presence allows them to bring growth, progress and jobs to the EU’s economy.” One coalition that lobbies a lot is called the ‘Industry Coalition for Data Protection.’ Although the name suggests otherwise, they aren't actually in favour of more data protection. Members are for example advertising agencies, European Internet providers, media companies, and the ‘Chamber of Commerce’, an American lobby organization. Taking just one example, Microsoft is a member of nine of the associations that are part of this “coalition”. Just how many voices does one company need? Notable organizations One thing stands out when going over the list of lobbying parties: Google, Microsoft and Facebook aren't on this list. Does that mean they didn't lobby? Well, they certainly did, as can be seen from the Microsoft example above. Furthermore, these are documents we obtained are just the lobbying letters. The list also contains very eye-catching parties. Toy manufacturers for example, the country Poland and the mayor of Amsterdam. The latter has asked critical questions on behalf of city archives in an email to the ministry of justice. Regular customer But who frequents the offices most often? That without a doubt is VNO-NCW, who represents Dutch businesses. They alone send almost a tenth of all the lobby letters. Discussion behind closed doors It's clear that there has been a lot of contact between businesses and the government and that there have been discussions behind closed doors. That in itself is important, but we will talk some more about this in a later blog. To be continued . . . Want to continue reading about this? On the Bits of Freedom website, you can find all the lobby documents and the analysis. The next part in this series is about the “innovation” argument. For the series of blogs and documents, see the Bits of Freedom website https://www.bof.nl/category/lobby-tomie/
Tags: European Data Protection |
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