BusinessEurope gets praise from EU governments, despite irresponsible lobbying

At a high-profile event into the Bella Center of Copenhagen yesterday, European industrialists repeated their demand that the EU should not go beyond a 20% CO2 reduction target. Lobby giant BusinessEurope has throughout the Copenhagen climate summit very vocally warned the EU against a 30% reduction, insisting the EU should wait for the outcome of the Copenhagen negotiations and what the US will do. Environment and development NGOs have criticised BusinessEurope's lobbying and accused it of “undermining the aims on the conference”. Oxfam UK called on British business lobby CBI “to publicly disassociate itself from Business Europe”.

The controversy around BusinessEurope's lobbying had not scared off heavy-weight political attendance to the event yesterday. BusinessEurope lobbyists Phillippe de Buck and Nick Campbell (introduced by de Buck as ‘the man that knows it all from a business perspective’) were joined on the panel by from BusinessEurope, Jos Debelke of the European Commission (and a leading EU negotiator) and the Vice Prime Minister of Sweden, Maude Olofsson.

Delbeke nor Olofsson distanced themselves the slightest from BusinessEurope, even when De Buck presented his lowest common nominator position and argued that we should all be proud of ”what European industry achieved since Kyoto, especially in comparison with other regions”.

Mrs Olofsson said the Swedish EU Presidency has been ”trying hard to work with the business sector because you are crucial and because we share the same vision about what we want for the future”.

Jos Delbeke said the Commission still strongly believes in market based approaches to reduce CO2 emissions, despite their failure up to now, because the alternatives to those would be either detailed regulation or taxation. These solutions are apparently simply discarded because big corporations dislike them and because these approaches don’t fit to the neoliberal dogmas the Commission seems to stubbornly adhere to.

Delbeke also said that ‘a political and not yet a legal agreement’ should be expected in Copenhagen

The event left me with uncomfortable feeling that BusinessEurope can get away with anything and still enjoy the backing of the European Commission and the Swedish Presidency. The voice of civil society, meanwhile, seems largely ignored.

Yesterday the Declaration of the KlimaForum of Copenhagen was launched, based on ellaborate democratic discussions between civil society representatives from around the world. It is hard to imagine European leaders embracing this vision of abandoning fossil fuels, recognising the climate debt, advancing democratic ownership and control of economy and so on. EU governments, unfortunately, seem to have firmly aligned themselves with the corporate vision of nuclear renaissance, illegitimate patent protection, anemic CO2 reduction goals, special regimes for the most polluting industries, the commodification of the atmosphere through carbon trading etc.