The report by Corporate Europe Observatory (CE) on the external advisory groups to the European Central Bank (ECB) concludes that a very large proportion of its counselling on monetary policy comes from ‘representatives of some of the most influential global financial corporations’.
The news item published today by CE summarizes its report findings, drawing the attention to the fact that ‘there is a hefty industry-bias in many of these expert groups’, considering the statistics:
- 98% of available seats have been assigned to private financial institutions;
- 11% of represented entities (representing ‘financial groups, including Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, Societé Générale, Citigroup and Unicredit’) amount to 41% of the advisors;
- 44% of the lobbyist to the ECB are not registered in the EU Transparency Register;
- 67% of advisers represent financial corporations supervised by the ECB.
According to CE, '[s]uch figures raise the question of whether the membership in the ECB’s advisory groups is a covetable asset for the big private banks’, underlining that such numbers clearly indicate the risk of biased counselling, to the detriment of the consumer For this reason CE has notified the ECON Committee of the European Parliament to urge the ECB to adopt rules on the composition of its advisory groups based on the balanced model of the European Commission.
Read here the full report of CE on Open doors for forces of finance.
See here the CE’s full table of the ECB external advisory groups’ composition.