EU watchdog questions commission’s secretive ‘Reality Checks’ with corporate lobbyists

The European Ombudsman is opening an inquiry into the EU Commission’s so-called “Reality Checks,” a new form of closed-door consultation, often reserved for businesses and lobbyists, that feeds directly into the EU’s simplification and deregulation drive.

Ombudswoman Teresa Anjinho announced on Wednesday (8 July) that she has asked the commission for a written reply and access to internal documentation, following a complaint lodged in April by the lobby watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO).

The issue at stake is the commission’s decision to exempt Reality Checks from standard transparency rules for meetings. 

Launched during the early days of Brussels’s deregulation push — the so-called omnibus process — Reality Checks are a new “consultation tool” aimed mainly at business “practitioners.”

Their goal, according to the commission’s own operational guidance, is to “ensure that policy objectives are achieved, and administrative burdens are minimised.”

That same document, obtained by CEO, says these meetings should be “exempt” from the same transparency rules as other meetings because they are technical in nature and not political.

They are, as the commission’s directorate explains it, organised “in response to a direct and specific request from the commission for factual information, data and expertise.”

But CEO’s Kenneth Haar, who filed the complaint, told EUobserver that the commission, through this route, can “plan far reaching deregulation with the very industries concerned, and no one will know about it until the proposal is published.” 

"The official explanation is that Reality Checks are to be technical exercises," Haar said. "In reality they are highly political, in that they help guide the commission on controversial issues."

Business interests

A CEO investigation published in April, based on participant lists obtained through access-to-documents requests, found that companies and business associations often made up between 80-100 percent of participants across commission directorates. 

The meetings they attended included sessions on sensitive topics such as free trade, steel, defence and artificial intelligence.