A biased rapporteur or politics as usual? Reassessing the balance of interests in the EU food information labelling case

ABSTRACT

In this article we challenge Kurzer and Cooper's claim that the industry was able to get its way in the Food Information to Consumers Regulation by successfully lobbying the European Parliament and benefiting from an industry-friendly rapporteur. We scrutinize their findings through a comprehensive analysis of all amendments tabled in the environmental committee at first reading and a process tracing of the 12 most salient issues. Our results indicate a rather balanced rapporteur and show that both the ENVI committee and the plenary EP changed the regulation in favour of consumer interests on a significant number of points, with key victories for the industry being the result of pressure from the Council, not from the European Parliament. We explain these results on the basis of earlier work examining the role-behaviour of rapporteurs and the functioning of Parliament committees.

KEY WORDS:

• EU food labelling
• European Parliament
• interest groups
• lobbying
• rapporteurs

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their critical and stimulating comments on previous versions of this article.

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA AND RESEARCH MATERIALS

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the Taylor and Francis website, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2015.1051095.

ORCID

Herman Lelieveldt http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6387-3488

Notes

1 Pearson's R correlation coefficients vary according to the party positioning measure used and range from 0.22 (party group estimate) to 0.502 (domestic party affiliation).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anneloes Hoff

Biographical notes

Anneloes Hoff and Ramon van der Does are currently pursuing postgraduate degrees at Oxford University and Leiden University respectively.

Herman Lelieveldt

Herman Lelieveldt is associate professor of political science at University College Roosevelt.

Ramon van der Does

Biographical notes

Anneloes Hoff and Ramon van der Does are currently pursuing postgraduate degrees at Oxford University and Leiden University respectively.