Making Politics for People a reality in Brussels...

Hopefully you will have heard about the Politics for People campaign during the recent European elections? Politics for People was a major campaign co-ordinated by the ALTER-EU coalition and involving many partner organisations in Brussels and across 19 EU member states. Together we asked prospective MEPs to sign up to a pledge to "stand-up for citizens and democracy against the excessive lobbying influence of banks and big business" and at the end of the campaign, over 1330 candidates had done so, of whom more than 170 were elected as MEPs.

Now the challenge for ALTER-EU and its member groups like Corporate Europe Observatory is to challenge MEPs to make the Politics for People pledge a reality.

Experienced Brussels-bubble watchers will know that the coming months are a critical time in the EU institutions. With the change-over of MEPs, a new commission and a new head of the European council, there will be much coming and going of decision-makers and their staff. Five years ago when the commission and parliament last changed, too many commissioners and too many MEPs went through the revolving door to industry lobby jobs provoking the real risk of conflicts of interest.

This prompted CEO to set up RevolvingDoorWatch a database which records the comings and goings of commissioners, MEPs and senior officials at the institutions and EU agencies. We keep it regularly updated and add new cases as we hear of them. Just in the last week, we have highlighted the case of Stefano Marino who joined the European medicines agency as head of legal affairs after 23 years in the pharmaceutical industry, and the case of Corien Wortmann-Kool who has just joined the supervisory board of insurance giant Aegon after 10 years as an MEP, including membership of the economic and monetary affairs committee.

It's vital that we are vigilant to expose such revolving door moves and we campaign hard for changes in the EU's ethics rules so as to work towards the elimination of the risk of conflicts of interests. But its often hard to find out about revolving door cases as there is little or no proactive transparency in this area. Do contact us if you have any intelligence to share on revolving door cases (revolvingdoorwatch@corporateeurope.org) and do check out the database: www.corporateeurope.org/revolvingdoorwatch