Overview
Lobbying Costs
None declared
Financial year: Apr 2013 - Mar 2014
Lobbyists (Full time equivalent)
3.75 Fte (15)
Lobbyists with EP accreditation
0
High-level Commission meetings
0
Lobbying Costs over the years
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Info
The Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace (ICOMP)
EU Transparency Register
94410281407-45 First registered on 23 Mar 2009
Goals / Remit
ICOMP’s mission is to promote widespread support for principles that are essential to a healthy online environment. Our key goals are to encourage competition, transparency, data privacy, security and respect for intellectual property protection. Furthermore, ICOMP brings together participants from across the Internet to identify and promote best practices aimed at stimulating creativity and innovation and foster an online environment founded on security, respect and trust. ICOMP’s members collectively support principles which they believe promote:
- Healthy competition in online advertising to fund online innovation and content.
- Consumer understanding of the ways in which information about them is used and how consumer privacy will be respected to help Internet and e-commerce reach their full potential.
- Intellectual property rights to foster creativity and innovation by enabling firms and individuals to capture the commercial value of their efforts.
ICOMP’s work is guided by the following principles:
1. Competition: Advertisers, web publishers and consumers all rely on healthy competition in online advertising to generate online innovation and content. Online advertising will continue to serve as the engine that drives the online economy, but only if vibrant competition in this critical sector is preserved.
2. Transparency: Companies benefiting from a very strong market position can sometimes achieve the status of “gate-keepers to the Internet”. There is a special obligation on such companies to be completely transparent about their business practices.
3. Privacy: The Internet and e-commerce will reach their full potential only if consumers are informed of the ways in which their information is used and are confident that their privacy will be respected.
4. Security: Today’s online consumer is subject to a variety of information security threats, including hacking, data spills, malware and identify theft. Companies that collect and store personal data must take all reasonable measures to ensure it remains safe and confidential.
5. IPR: Intellectual property rights foster creativity, innovation and online growth, by enabling firms and individuals to enjoy the commercial fruits of their hard work and investment.Main EU files targeted
ICOMP follows EU initiatives and policies on European Digital Agenda, Digital Single Market, EU Data Protection Reform, Competition Policy, Copyright and IPRs.
Address
Head Office
ICOMP Secretariat (C/O Burson Marsteller)
Central St Giles
London WC2H 8AG
UNITED KINGDOMEU Office
ICOMP Secretariat (C/O Burson Marsteller)
37, Square de Meeûs
Brussels 1000
BELGIUM -
People
Total lobbyists declared
15
Employment time Lobbyists 25% 15 Lobbyists (Full time equivalent)
3.75
Lobbyists with EP accreditation
No lobbyists with EP accreditations
Complementary Information
ICOMP has identified some 15 people in total who are, from time to time, involved in providing varying levels of support on activities falling under the scope of the Register. These include, inter alia, David Wood (ICOMP’s Legal Counsel), Auke Haagsma (Director of ICOMP), Lord Alan Watson (ICOMP’s Chair), as well as those advisors at Burson Marsteller in London and Brussels who manage the ICOMP Secretariat. Note that while ICOMP’s FTE estimates appear in the field above at 3.8 (owing to the automatic calculation) this is a significant over-estimate: according to ICOMP’s internal calculations, ICOMP’s FTE estimates falling under the scope of the Register are at approximately 0.5. In this context, it is important to note that all those individuals included in the data provided in the above field spend significantly less than 25% of their time on activities falling under the scope of the Register and the vast majority of these individuals spend less than 5% of their time per week on average on activities falling under the scope of the Register.
Person in charge of EU relations
Ms Karen Massin (Chief Operating Officer, Burson Marsteller, Brussels)
Person with legal responsibility
Lord Alan Watson (Chair)
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Categories
Category
II - In-house lobbyists and trade/business/professional associations
Subcategory
Other organisations
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Networking
Affiliation
As noted above, ICOMP is an associate member of the European Internet Foundation. See http://www.i-comp.org/partnerships/
Member organisations
At the time of this update, ICOMP represents the interests of 31 council members and also has signatories who sign up to its principles. A list of ICOMP council members is maintained on ICOMP’s website: http://www.i-comp.org/members/
(1) The Council & Council Members
The Council is the guiding body of ICOMP and consists of ICOMP members making financial contributions to ICOMP. The Council is chaired by Lord Alan Watson. It includes members which are associations, including the Centre of the Picture Industry (“CEPIC”); Associaçío Portuguesa De Software (“ASSOFT”); and SUMA-EV, as well as a number of individual enterprises.
(2) Signatories
ICOMP also has signatories who have signed ICOMP’s principles and aims: they agree on the need for a more competitive, transparent, privacy friendly and secure online marketplace. ICOMP is supported by 51 such signatory companies, including the Spanish Chapter of the International Advertising Association and the Association of Spanish Editors of Newspapers, (“AEDE”).
ICOMP Council members and signatories reside across 18 different countries around the world.
Other than the Council, ICOMP also has a Secretariat which is run by a UK registered company, Burson Marsteller, and which is responsible for the administration and Secretariat of ICOMP. -
Financial Data
Closed financial year
Apr 2013 - Mar 2014
Lobbying costs for closed financial year
None declared
Other financial info
At the time of update, ICOMP’s most recent financial year is 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2014.
The financial information provided by ICOMP in this entry relates to the costs attributable to the activities falling within the scope of the Register as defined in Part III of the new Inter-Institutional Agreement (2014), i.e., activities carried out with the objective of directly or indirectly influencing the formulation or implementation of policy and the decision-making processes of the EU institutions, irrespective of where they were taken or the channel or medium of communication used. In particular, ICOMP has included in its estimated total, where applicable, those costs listed in Section 3.11.2 of the Implementing Guidelines (2015), inter alia: in-house operational expenditure, representation costs and the costs relating to outsourced activities. In keeping with Part III (paragraph 8) of the new Inter-Institutional Agreement and Section 3.11.2 of the Implementing Guidelines, ICOMP has included in its estimations those costs attributable to activities falling under the scope of the Register which were carried out by consultants and subcontractors, irrespective of whether the latter include these in their own financial declaration on the Register.
In keeping with the exceptions provided for in Part III of the Inter-Institutional Agreement, ICOMP has excluded from the scope of the Register (and thus from financial data) those activities relating directly to specific legal and administrative cases and procedures which do not seek to change the existing legal framework in the EU. In particular, ICOMP is a formal complainant before the European Commission in administrative proceedings in Case 39.740 Google. Accordingly, costs attributable to activities directly pertaining to this case have been excluded from the scope of ICOMP’s entry on the Transparency Register.
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EU Structures
Groups (European Commission)
None
ACC
None
Groups (European Parliament)
ICOMP is an associate member of the European Internet Forum (EIF)
Communication activities
ICOMP promotes the widespread support for principles that are essential to a healthy online environment and for a more competitive, transparent, privacy friendly, and secure online marketplace. It does so though, inter alia, sponsoring and organising conferences and press roundtables, issuing policy briefs and commissioning consumer research. During the period for which ICOMP has reported financial data (see below), ICOMP’s specific activities falling under the scope of the Register included:
- Maintaining ICOMP’s blog (http://www.i-comp.org/blog/)
- Meeting with Members of the European Parliament and with Commission officials.
- Circulation of newsletters.
- Organising events in Brussels (including, its event "Your content, their profits – How online copyright theft threatens culture and creativity").
- Organising conferences, webinars and press-round tables.
- Issuing policy briefs and discussion papers (in particular, ICOMP sponsored the following paper by Andrew Keen - “Profiting from Free: the scourge of online privacy and how industry can help”).Other activities
None declared
Meetings
Meetings
None declared