* This pattern hasn’t changed significantly since the new Commission took office in November 2014. In the first six months of the job, Cecilia Malmström, members of her Cabinet and the director general of DG Trade had 122 one-on-one lobby meetings behind-closed doors in which TTIP was discussed. 100 of these meetings were with business lobbyists – but only 22 with public interest groups. So, for every meeting with a trade union or a consumer organisation, Malmström and her staff had 5 get-togethers with companies and their lobby groups.

* The corporate lobby groups which lobbied hardest for TTIP in the early phases of the negotiations are: the European employers‘ federation BusinessEurope, the Transatlantic Business Council (representing over 70 EU and US-based multinationals), the European car lobby ACEA, the chemical lobby CEFIC, the European Services Forum, the European pharmaceutical lobby EFPIA, Food and Drink Europe, the US Chamber of Commerce and Digital Europe (whose members include all the big IT names, like Apple, Blackberry, IBM, and Microsoft).

* These business sectors have lobbied most for TTIP in the early phases of the negotiations: agribusiness and food, cross-sectoral lobby groups such as BusinessEurope, telecom & IT, pharmaceuticals, finance, engineering & machinery, automobiles, health technology, chemicals, express & logistics.

* Several sectors have significantly stepped up their lobbying for TTIP (comparing the preparatory phase of the negotiations with the first months): the pharmaceutical sector has increased its lobbying for TTIP seven-fold. While only 2,4% of DG Trade’s one-on-one lobby meetings on TTIP were with Big Pharma in the early phases of the negotiations (January 2012 to March 2013), the sector’s share in lobby meetings jumped to 16,5% in the period after (April 2013 to February 2014). The engineering and machinery sector has tripled its TTIP lobbying effort in the same period (from 3,0% to 9,5% of the behind-closed-doors meetings with DG Trade). Financial sector lobbying also doubled (from an 5,1% share in the total amount of corporate lobby meetings on TTIP to 10,8%).

* One in every 5 corporate lobby groups which have lobbied DG Trade on TTIP are not registered in the EU’s Transparency Register, amongst them large companies such as Maersk, AON, and Levi’s. Industry associations such as biotechnology lobby BIO, pharmaceutical lobby group PhrMA and the American Chemical Council are also lobbying under the radar. More than one third of all US companies and associations which have lobbied DG Trade on TTIP are not in the EU register.

* TTIP lobbying comes mostly from business in Western Europe and the US. Between January 2012 and February 2014 not a single direct lobby encounter took place on TTIP between DG Trade and businesses from Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Portugal and most of Eastern Europe (Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia).

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P i a   E b e r h a r d t
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