Omzet van lobbyisten bij EU-instellingen hoger dan officieel opgegeven (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Multi-million euro gaps between the officially-audited accounts of Brussels lobbying firms and their declarations on an EU register are not linked to under-reporting, the companies say.
Hill and Knowlton in Brussels recorded a turnover of €12.8 million for 2007 at the National Bank of Belgium. But its entry for 2007 on the European Commission's lobbyist register said it was paid just €8.1 million for "representing interests to EU institutions on behalf of clients."
Similar gaps exist at many of the top advocacy firms in the EU capital.
APCO officially recorded a turnover of €12.7 million for 2007. But it declared EU lobbying income of €5.9 million. Burson-Marsteller recorded €8.9 million but gave an EU declaration of €7 million. Edelman recorded €2.7 million but told the EU it gets "over" €1 million for lobbying.
Part of the reason is that the Brussels offices of major public relations firms work on projects which do not target the EU institutions.
Hill and Knowlton has a PR department which has helped with Europe-wide consumer product launches. Burson-Marsteller has co-ordinated Olympic city bids. "We have an international team that speaks 22 languages, so we hub a lot of work out of Brussels," APCO's managing director in Brussels, Garry Walsh, said.
The gaps get bigger because the EU has excluded from its register any lobbying related to ongoing EU competition law cases.
The European Commission's fuzzy definition of what constitutes "representing interests to EU institutions" also plays a role in creating the discrepancies, however.
Some firms do not count monitoring (keeping the client informed of changes to EU policy) as lobbying. Some do not count media work, such as pitching the client's ideas to the Brussels press corps. Some also exclude organising social events with EU officials.
"It's hair-splitting. No administrative system can capture it. 'OK, so this morning I did monitoring for my client. But this afternoon I did lobbying.' It's about the overall balance, am I monitoring or lobbying?" Edelman director, Laurent Chokouale Datou, said.
Closing the gap
Hill and Knowlton, APCO, Burson-Marsteller and Edelman say they take a maximalist approach to their EU declarations.
But in practice, Fleishman-Hillard, Kreab Gavin Anderson and Ogilvy are among the few big EU advocacy companies whose general turnover matches its EU register entry.
Fleishman-Hillard recorded €6.4 million in Belgium and declared €6.3 million to the EU. Kreab Gavin Anderson partner, Karl Isaksson, said the firm will this week declare €4 million to the EU, which is "close" to its overall income. Ogilvy recorded €2.6 million and declared €2.5 million.
Fleishman-Hillard and Kreab Gavin Anderson said they have chosen to declare almost everything in the EU register "to avoid confusion," with pro-transparency NGOs generally suspicious of hidden clients in the sector.
Meanwhile, the European Commission, which is due to publish a one year review of its register later this month, has indicated it will not propose any sweeping changes for now.
"We will give more guidance so there is less room to decide what should be included," the commission official in charge of the register project, Kristian Schmidt, told EUobserver. "But generally, people have gone to great lengths to put forward figures that they can defend and we recognise that ...I think people are playing the game as good sports."
A top 10
The Belgian National Bank records can be used to create a back-of-the-envelope league table of Brussels PR firms by size of turnover.
The top 10 would read: Hill and Knowlton, Burson-Marsteller, APCO, Fleishman-Hillard, Kellen Europe (not in the EU register), Kreab Gavin Anderson, Edelman, Ogilvy, Grayling (not in the EU register) and Interel.
Some other large PR firms in Brussels, such as Pleon, GPlus, Hume Brophy and Weber Shandwick either have incomplete Belgian accounts or do not report in Belgium.
European Commission
Official Documents