Tag: Lobbyists

Revealed: most of EU delegation to crucial fishing talks made up of fishery lobbyists

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More than half of the EU’s delegation to a crucial body of tuna stock regulators is made up of fishing industry lobbyists, the Guardian’s Seascape project can reveal, as Europe is accused of “neocolonial” overfishing in the Indian Ocean.
The numbers could shed some light on why the EU recently objected to an agreement by African and Asian coastal nations to restrict harmful fish aggregating devices (FADs) that disproportionately harvest juvenile tuna. Stocks of yellowfin tuna are overfished in the Indian Ocean.
FADs are large floating rafts that attract fish by casting a shadow, making it easy for vessels to catch massive numbers of tuna. They contribute to overfishing of yellowfin because they attract juveniles as well as endangered turtles, sharks and mammals that get caught up when the devices are encircled in purse seine nets.
In February, a proposal by Indonesia and 10 other coastal states in the region – including India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan – for a 72-day ban on FADs used by purse seine vessels was adopted by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), the main regulatory body. With a two-thirds majority vote, the measure was welcome by conservationists as a “huge win” for yellowfin and other marine life.
Retailers including Tesco, Co-op and Princes have previously issued calls for tough action to preserve and rebuild the $4bn yellowfin industry, while this year Marks & Spencer warned EU officials that FADs are a major cause of yellowfin tuna overfishing, and that they cripple future stocks.
The devices, typically made of plastic, also pollute the ocean and small island states when lost or discarded.
But earlier this month the EU, which is the largest harvester of tropical tuna in the region, objected to the measure, effectively exempting it from the restrictions. Critics described the move as “neocolonialism”, pointing to the influence of industry lobbyists from France and Spain in ignoring the will of many coastal nations.
Artisanal fishers in Gazi Bay, Kenya unload the latest catch … but they complain that large foreign vessels are draining the Indian Ocean of yellowfin tuna. Photograph: Brian Inganga/AP
At the last annual IOTC meeting, the EU’s 40-strong delegation was made up of at least 24 industry lobbyists listed as “advisers”, Guardian analysis shows. At the smaller special session on FADs this year, at least half of the 10 EU delegates were from the tuna industry.

The percentage of lobbyists in the EU’s official delegation has been rising since 2015, when yellowfin tuna was declared overfished by IOTC scientists. A report in January by Bloom, a French NGO, calculated that the annual number of industrial lobbyists within the EU delegation has more than doubled in recent years, rising from an average of eight in 2015 to 18 in 2021.
A European Commission official said, in a statement, that industry representatives have “no decision-making responsibility” at the IOTC, unlike commission officials. Policymaking at the IOTC relies on the European Green Deal objectives, the conservation of biodiversity and sustainability of stocks, and was more complex than the number or type of delegates, said the official. The EU tabled the largest number of proposals in 2022, including yellowfin management and FAD management, the statement said, adding that this was not what you might expect if “commercial interests dominated the EU position”.
Concerns over the European industry’s influence over Indian Ocean coastal states deepened following two proposals by Seychelles to the IOTC containing changes that appear to have been made by Europêche and other industry groups.
Jess Rattle, the head of investigations at the Blue Marine Foundation, said the EU’s actions flew in the face of commitments made at the historic high seas treaty, agreed last month to protect biodiversity. “The EU has entirely abandoned this sentiment in favour of plundering the Indian Ocean’s already overfished stocks, safe in the knowledge that, once all the fish are gone, its highly developed fleet can simply move to another ocean, unlike the many coastal states left behind with nothing.”
More than two-thirds of countries accepted the ban. But Seychelles, which has 13 EU-owned tuna vessels flagged to its state, also objected to the FAD proposal, along with Comoros, Oman, Kenya and the Philippines.
“Their objections can be seen as a form of neocolonialism by the EU,” said Rattle. “This measure was voted in at the IOTC, not just by a majority but a two-thirds majority. By objecting, and stirring up objections from their vassal states, the EU are making it clear they’re going to continue to fish the way they want to, regardless. That is disgraceful.”
Referring to the changes to Seychelles’ proposals by Europêche, Rattle said: “The industry appears to be making changes to proposals submitted by Seychelles. They clearly have power over this coastal state.”
Jeremy Raguain, a Seychellois conservationist and a negotiator for Seychelles in the high seas treaty talks, said his country is highly dependent on the EU, its largest trading partner, and on tuna exports. “We need a thriving tuna industry for economic survival, but it is environmentally unsustainable and only profitable through huge subsidies,” he said.
“Seychelles is in a tight spot. Indonesia has taken the right stance, but Seychelles is not Indonesia. There is neocolonial pressure.”
An official in the European Commission said the EU had already submitted a proposal “with a strong scientific basis” to reduce the number of FADs but that the IOTC “unfortunately” agreed to an alternative from Indonesia. The adopted proposal “lacks a scientific basis and would prove impossible to implement”, added the spokesperson, claiming it could have a “very substantial” negative impact on many fishers and communities.
A spokesperson for Europêche , which represents fishers in the EU as well as tropical tuna producers organisations – including the Europêche Tuna Group (ETG) – confirmed that some of its boats fly Seychelles’ flag.
“Seychelles consult ETG, as they also consult NGOs and other industries’ groups, on their proposal projects,” the spokesperson said. “It is then up to its government representatives to follow or not the different comments they receive.”
The Guardian approached authorities in Seychelles for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

April 26, 2023
Big Tech lobbyists get stuck in to UK’s landmark competition bill

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LONDON — As the U.K. prepares to overhaul its competition regime, a fierce lobbying battle has broken out between the world’s largest tech companies and their challengers.
Ministers are gearing up to publish new competition legislation in late-April, giving regulators more power to stop a handful of companies dominating digital markets.
But concern over the U.S. tech giants’ influence in Westminster has prompted ministers close to the bill to warn that the new legislation could be watered down.

Two ministers have expressed concerns that Big Tech firms are seeking to weaken the process for appealing decisions made by the country’s beefed-up competition regulator, according to multiple people who were either present at those discussions or whose organizations were represented there. They requested anonymity to discuss private meetings.
One MP said a minister had also approached them to raise concerns, while at an industry roundtable, two ministers spoke of worry about Big Tech firms trying to influence the appeal mechanism.
An industry representative said: “There has been a sh*t load of lobbying from Big Tech, but I don’t know if they’ll succeed.”
Appealing to who?
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill will give new powers to a branch of the Competition and Markets Authority called the Digital Markets Unit (DMU). Under the plan, the DMU will be able fine a company 10 percent of their annual turnover for breaching a code of conduct.
The code, which has not yet been published, would be designed to ensure that a company with ‘strategic market status’ cannot “unfairly use its market power and strategic position to distort or undermine competition between users of the … firm’s services,” the government has said.
Jonathan Jones, senior consultant in public law at Linklaters and formerly the head of the U.K. government’s legal department, wrote that the plan would have “very significant consequences” for Big Tech firms and could force them to “significantly alter” their business models.
One of Big Tech’s concerns is that the bill will only allow companies to appeal decisions made by the DMU on whether or not the right process was followed, known as the judicial review standard, rather than the content or merit of the decision. That puts it in line with other regulators and should mean the process is faster, but it also makes it harder to appeal decisions.
Big Tech firms want to be able to appeal on the “merit”, arguing it is unfair that they can’t challenge whether a DMU decision was correct or not. They also argue it won’t necessarily be slower than the judicial review standard.
One of the biggest fears from medium-sized firms is that the biggest tech companies will use strategies to lengthen the appeals process or even get the entire bill delayed | iStock
Tech Minister Paul Scully, who has responsibility for the bill, told POLITICO: “We want to make sure that the legislation is flexible, proportionate and fair to both big and challenger companies. Any remediation needs to be in place quickly as digital markets move quickly.”
One representative of a mid-sized tech firm said: “This is the fundamental point of contention and it will influence whether the bill works for SMEs and challengers against Big Tech.
“The fear is that big companies with big lawyers understand how to eke things out (during the appeals process) so that they’ll keep their market advantage for years. We’ve heard ministers express these concerns too.”
Consumer group Which? is also urging the government to stay with its proposed appeal system. “For the DMU to work effectively, the government must stick to its guns and ensure that the decisions it reaches are not tied up in an elongated appeals process,” said director of policy, Rocio Concha.
‘Investigator and executioner’
But Jones argued that the bill will make the DMU too powerful.
“The DMU will have power to decide who it is going to regulate, set the rules that apply to them, and then enforce those rules,” he wrote. “This makes the DMU effectively legislator, investigator and executioner.”
On the appeal method, Jones argued that it is an “oversimplification” to think that the government’s proposed standard of appeal would be quicker than one based on merits.
Ben Greenstone, managing director of tech policy consultancy Taso Advisory, said: “I can understand the argument from both sides. The largest tech companies are incentivized to push back against this, but my guess is the government will keep the appeals process as it is, because it keeps it in line with the wider competition regime.”
However, he added the bill would work better if some sort of compromise can be found with the biggest tech companies.
The international playbook
One of the biggest fears from medium-sized firms is that the biggest tech companies will use strategies already tried and tested abroad to lengthen the appeals process or even get the entire bill delayed.
In the U.S., the Open App Markets Act has failed to pass following huge spends on lobbying.
Rick VanMeter, executive director of the Coalition for App Fairness, which is based in the U.S. but has U.K. members, said: “In the U.S. we’ve learned that these mobile app gatekeepers’ will stop at nothing to preserve the status quo and squash their competition.
“To be successful, policymakers around the world must see through these gatekeepers’ efforts for what they are: self-serving attempts to retain their market power.”
Google and Microsoft declined to comment. Apple did not respond.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

April 1, 2023
Lobbyists to Biden: Unless you want to cede to China, relax microchip rules

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The chip industry’s push underscores the tension between President Joe Biden’s plans to resurrect high-tech manufacturing in the U.S. and his administration’s effort to strengthen environmental protections. Even as the White House pushes for an advantage in the tech race with China, an exemption for federally funded chip projects would run counter to Biden’s recent rollback of Trump-era rules that sought to limit the ability of federal agencies to conduct environmental reviews.
A spokesperson for the Commerce Department’s CHIPS Program Office declined to comment.
At issue is the National Environmental Policy Act, a decades-old law that puts extra environmental review requirements on construction projects in which the federal government plays a major role. While many industries, like highway builders or other infrastructure contractors, have decades of experience dealing with the law, it’s something new for the semiconductor industry — and it’s hoping to avoid it, arguing that any delays could spell trouble for Washington’s broader chip plans.
“Time is of the essence,” David Isaacs, vice president of government affairs at SIA, told POLITICO on Thursday.
In a separate filing, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — the largest lobbying group in the country — also pushed the Biden administration to provide new chip projects with an exemption to the review process. The Chamber highlighted the “vital and strategic role semiconductors play in both economic and national security,” and warned that NEPA reviews could cause some projects to take “as much as 7 years to be approved.”
The semiconductor industry has also been working lawmakers on Capitol Hill. In a hearing on Feb. 1, House Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said chip manufacturers “are coming to us looking for exemptions from NEPA, because the federal dollars are triggering long and erroneous environmental reviews for them.”
In a Friday statement, McMorris Rodgers warned that Washington will be unable to beat China in the fight over microchips and other tech if new projects are “bogged down and delayed by America’s burdensome regulatory and permitting environment.” She said the issue “should have been addressed before Congress spent tens of billions of dollars” on chip subsidies, but added that House Republicans “will continue to lead on solutions that address permitting issues for every industry in our economy.”
The Biden administration remains worried by the concentration of advanced chip production in Taiwan, which sits just 90 miles from an increasingly hostile China. Sujai Shivakumar, director of the Renewing American Innovation Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said environmental concerns shouldn’t interfere with the national security goals that underpin the CHIPS and Science Act’s billions of dollars in manufacturing subsidies.

“Some of these environmental assessments can take anywhere from two years to 4½ years,” Shivakumar said. “To some real extent, what CHIPS and Science giveth, NEPA could taketh away.”
Some environmentalists disagree with that claim. Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the chip lobby’s fears “feel like unnecessary paranoia that’s mostly stemming from an unfamiliarity with how NEPA works.” He said the law is frequently trotted out by industry as an “umbrella scapegoat for all types of delays in approvals of projects.” While Hartl could not say there’s a “zero chance” that taking federal chip subsidies would by itself prompt a NEPA review, he called it “a relatively unlikely thing that would trigger it.”
But the chip lobby is still spooked. On Thursday, Isaacs said a “balance can be struck” on NEPA that allows new chip manufacturing facilities to begin operations “in a timely and environmentally responsible way, achieve the goals of the CHIPS Act, and reinforce America’s economic and national security.”
Some lawmakers question why the chip industry didn’t make more noise about NEPA until after Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law last summer. In the February hearing, McMorris Rodgers said she had previously urged manufacturers to ask Congress for permitting reform along with the federal subsidies.
“Unfortunately, that seemed to fall on deaf ears,” McMorris Rodger said. “[The manufacturers] were really interested in the money.”
The lobbying effort is going down to the wire. In a Thursday speech at Georgetown University, Raimondo said the Commerce Department will officially launch the application process for chip subsidies on Tuesday. But without clarity on federal environmental reviews, Shivakumar said chipmakers will struggle to draft the manufacturing proposals Commerce hopes to receive.
“What the semiconductor companies want is some certainty,” Shivakumar said. While the companies have already factored state and local environmental procedures into their plans, Shivakumar said NEPA “is an unknown to them.”
Chip factories use huge amounts of energy and are notoriously thirsty. The facilities require vast quantities of purified water to wash the silicon wafers used to make chips — and while much of it is later “recycled” back into the environment, the purification process is so thorough that salts and other minerals must be added back into the water before it returns to nature. Chip facilities also use a variety of corrosive chemicals to etch chips into the wafers, potentially raising additional contamination concerns.
For industries to receive a categorical exclusion from NEPA, they must show that the “class of actions” under review (in this case, chipmaking) “do not individually or cumulatively have a significant effect on the human environment.” But Hartl said that even if the Commerce Department wanted to grant that exclusion, they’d first have to kick off a rulemaking process.
“That is a two-year, three-year process,” said Hartl — likely small comfort for the chip lobby, whose members are hoping to receive the subsidies within the next year.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 27, 2023