Brussels, 07/11/2013 (Agence Europe) - Research by the Alter-UE NGO shows that the European Commission puts large companies at the head of its key expert groups.
The figures released on Wednesday 6 November show that, at the European Commission departments for taxation and customs union (DG TAXUD), nearly 80% of expert group members represent corporate interests. At the Secretariat General, the figure is 64% and at DG Enterprise and Industry 62%. If these figures are correct, they show that the Commission has not kept his promise to change the way the expert groups are set up. Alter-UE says that the European Parliament was right to demand greater transparency (in September 2012, it abandoned its plan of freezing the budget for expert groups when the Commission promised to change the way they are set up). The NGO asks the Commission to put a moratorium on the creation of new expert groups in the DGs with the worst figures until improvements have been made to the existing groups. (LC/transl.fl)