BRITAIN’S EU trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, has been the subject of an official rebuke after refusing to reveal details of meetings with industry lobbyists.

The EU’s watchdog issued the formal censure last week after a two-year investigation into Mandelson’s refusal to name the lobbyists he had met.

The European ombudsman ruled that Mandelson’s office had been “wrongly blanking out the names of industry lobbyists” in documents released to the public. It said that “disclosure of names of individual lobbyists is essential”. The failure to reveal this information “would constitute an instance of maladministration by the commission”.

The reprimand is the first significant setback for Mandelson since he became an EU commissioner with responsibility for trade policy in 2004. He was twice forced to resign as a British government minister for allegedly failing to disclose crucial information.

Critics said this weekend that by refusing to reveal the details Mandelson had laid himself open to another potential “lobby-gate” scandal.

The 18-page ruling is likely to lead to fresh scrutiny over his role in Brussels where he is responsible for policy regulating trade worth billions of pounds.

In 2005, Corporate Europe Observatory, a pressure group funded by Sigrid Rausing, a member of the billionaire Tetra Pak dynasty, Christian Aid and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, requested details of Mandelson’s meetings with industry lobbyists representing the financial services industry and transatlantic multinational firms. The group was concerned about the lobbyists’ influence over European trade policy that it had been studying.

At the time Mandelson was regarded as being close to the financial services lobbyists who are pushing for the liberalisation of rules around the world.

Mandelson released documents about the meetings that he had held in Brussels and at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. However, substantial passages and the names of lobbyists were blacked out. Other commissioners have released similar information in full. After the ombudsman’s investigation began, Mandelson’s office claimed that it was protecting the “privacy” of individuals and the commission’s decision-making process.

The ombudsman’s report states: “The commission took the view that there is no added value from a transparency point of view in disclosing the names of these [lobbyists]. The reality is, however, that there is a very significant added value in disclosing the names of individual lobbyists, both in general and in this specific case.”

It added: “The blanking out of names also contradicts the commission’s proposal in the green paper on the European Transparency Initiative.”

A spokesman for Mandelson said: “I’m perfectly aware that it doesn’t necessarily look good. This is very unfortunate. Mr Mandelson’s view is that we have supplied the names of the groups that these people represented. We have been advised by our legal people that for data protection reasons we are not in a position to give out the names of individuals. Their names would have to be checked with those people and that is an administrative burden.”

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