The author of this piece is a member of the commission's expert group that has worked on the guidelines.

Here is how the paper describes ethics-washing:

"This phenomenon is an example of “ethics washing”. Industry organizes and cultivates ethical debates to buy time – to distract the public and to prevent or at least delay effective regulation and policy-making. Politicians also like to set up ethics committees because it gives them a course of action when, given the complexity of the issues, they simply don't know what to do – and that’s only human."