Studie: steeds hogere salarissen voor lobbyisten (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Senior lobbyists working in Brussels can command larger salaries than the European officials they are paid to stalk, according to a new study on pay in the EU capital.
The 'Brussels Remuneration Report', published by head-hunting firm Ellwood & Atfield (E&A) on Friday (17 September), says a managing director of one of the city's leading consultancies can be paid as much as €400,000 per annum, while European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso i is paid roughly €300,000.
A secretary-general of one of the many trade associations represented in Brussels can top this €400k figure, while the head of an EU NGO office rarely gets paid more than €120,000 a year, said the report which is largely based on 200 one-to-one interviews.
"With up to 80 percent of legislation in certain policy areas emanating from Brussels and an expanded EU of 27 countries, most interest groups are scaling up their representation in the capital of Europe," said Ben Atfield, co-founder of E&A.
"This trend is leading to very attractive remuneration for senior lobbyists and communication professionals which often dwarf salaries in national capitals," he added.
Mr Altfield cautioned that varying levels of taxation complicated the matter, with most single workers in Brussels being forced to pay Belgium's extremely high top income tax rate of 57 percent, once social security is taken into account.
Special rules for EU officials mean some pay as little as eight percent however.
Most MEPs get paid roughly €126,000 per year under the current set of rules, brought in after elections in June 2009.
Prior to the new rules, MEP salaries were paid by member state administrations and varied considerably. Now they are uniform and extracted from the EU's own budget, but a small group of 30 deputies continue to operate under the previous system.
MEPs who served in the previous parliament and were returned in June 2009 were offered the chance to continue their previous salary arrangements paid by member states, a parliamentary official confirmed.
The changing face of lobbying
With the smallest of changes to EU legislation potentially altering profit margins by millions of euros, it is not difficult to see why firms opt to pay Brussels-based consultancies to point them towards decision-makers.
Olivier Hoedeman, a researcher with Brussels-based transparency group Corporate Europe Observatory, says tactics have evolved over the years.
"Generally in the 1980s and 90s, the commission was the main target, whereas the parliament was less so," he told this website. "But as the parliament's power have increased under successive EU treaty changes, so has the lobbying."
He adds that for a successful lobby campaign, the most important thing is to be there right from the start of a new piece of legislation. This explains why firms go to great efforts to influence the EU's collection of over 1000 'expert groups'.
Commission units working on a new piece of legislation will frequently outsource the question to be tackled to one of these groups, which include industry officials, in order to generate ideas for their first draft.
"So if you can be in the group or dominate the group you have a good start," said Mr Hoedeman.
National governments, represented in the Council of Ministers, are also targeted, as witnessed by Italy's successful attempts to delay the start of a free-trade agreement with South Korea following extensive lobbying from carmaker Fiat.
Officials in political party offices are also increasingly been taken out for lunches and dinners around the capital as party politics grows.
EU commissioners rarely used to attend party meetings, but now several will frequently turn up at the regular party gatherings on the eve of European summits. Likewise, MEPs are under increased pressure these days to vote along party lines, whereas it was "remarkably absent in the past", said Mr Hoedeman.