This week, AK Europa, the Brussels office of the Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour together with the ÖGB Europabüro, the Brussels office of the Austrian Trade Union Federation and ALTER-EU, hosted a panel discussion on the subject of the Lobby Register and Expert Groups. Following the introduction of a voluntary lobby register and the practice that commission officials of the highest levels publish their lobby meetings, experts and institution representatives discussed the current challenges in dealing with lobbying.

Julia Reda: “Transparency is only a first step”

Julia Reda, MEP Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance, Pirate Party, has already been making an effort concerning transparency by publishing all her contacts with lobbyists. She reported on lobbying with regard to the Parliament.

Particularly problematic was the fact that draft Directives would first be discussed with lobbyists in expert groups and that only some time later parliamentarians would be able to participate in the debates. As a result of this, lobbyists would determine, which questions would be asked, thereby influencing any solutions at the same time.

Transparency would require additional capacities; currently there would be only two members of staff for keeping the register in the Commission, whilst in comparison Canada would employ 30 members of staff to fulfil the same task. It was also the responsibility of the Commission to persuade the other institutions to engage in more transparency – however, the Council would represent the greatest challenge.

Transparency was only a first step: next on the agenda had to be the end of over-representation of business lobbies, for example by ensuring a more balanced composition of expert groups through active support measures. The Parliament could freeze expert groups' assets as a means of sanctioning against infringements. Public pressure would be decisive to achieve greater transparency. It was therefore the responsibility of each individual to make everybody aware of the subject.

Martin Kroeger: “Making lobbying more transparent”

Martin Kroeger, Head of Unit Transparency, Secretariat-General, European Commission, commented that the Commission would continue to be committed to improving the current situation concerning lobbying. Broad consensus would prevail within the European Commission that lobbying was taking place. However, one could not object in principle to groups trying to influence the decision-making process. The objective was to make lobbying more transparent.

The debate was now dealing with the question, which measures would be adequate. The currently preferred option of the European Commission was that lobbyists had to be registered to gain access to EU institutions. This would be an effective system provided it was implemented. Martin Kroeger emphasised that above all a new system had to be feasible on the basis of existing personnel and financial resources.

The Commission was trying to make progress in respect of transparency in cooperation with other European institutions. It had been planned to conclude a relevant interinstitutional agreement, which was scheduled for negotiations in the coming year. The Commission would launch a public consultation on the subject as a next step.

Aidan O’Sullivan: “So far we like this Commission”

Aidan O’Sullivan, Head of Cabinet of the European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly mentioned that the new Ombudsman would put great emphasis on the subject of lobby transparency and that she was very active in this area. So far, the new Juncker Commission was progressing well. If, compared to the Commission, all other EU Institutions had made similar progress, the situation concerning clean lobbying in the EU would be much improved.

O’Sullivan identified deficits in particular with European institutions such as the ECB, the EIB or the ECJ. However, the most powerful lobbies were certainly active on Member State level as was clearly obvious if one looked at the example of VW. Here, there was still a complete lack of transparency and regulation.

Paul de Clerck: “In eight of ten cases, the Commission consults industry lobbyists”

Paul de Clerck, Head of the Economic Justice team at Friends of the Earth Europe and Member of the Steering Committee of ALTER-EU, emphasized that following the introduction of the lobby register by the Commission, it was now important to implement the next step: the lobby register had to become mandatory; to achieve this, incentives and sanctions had to be introduced for example that organisations, which had not signed up to the register, would be denied access to buildings of the Commission. Apart from that all lobby appointments should be published, not only those of high-ranking officials.

NGOs too had to make an effort to achieve transparency: that is why ALTER-EU had published a Guide for NGOs, in which it recommends the publication of the origin of financial resources.

The organisers also used the event to draw attention to a brand new AK study on lobbying. Transparency International also used the event to draw attention to a current study of their own, which emphasises the obvious shortcomings of the current voluntary lobby register. In addition, the European Parliament has also published a current study on the composition of expert groups, which was pointed out during the course of the event.

Further information:

AK-Brochure on Lobbying in Brussels

www.integritywatch.eu – Database on lobby meetings in the EU by Transparency International

Study of the European Parliament on expert groups

Pictures from the event