Transparency International EU are calling for the EU institutions to match international best practice. A strong ethics oversight body, like those in France and Canada, should oversee ethics and revolving doors cases in the EU Institutions and be able to impose sanctions. A cooling-off period for Members of the European Parliament should be introduced as a matter of urgency.

The full report is available here: http://transparency.eu/access-all-areas/

The full career-paths of 485 former MEPs and 27 former Commissioners are available on EU Integrity Watch: www.integritywatch.eu/revolvingdoor

The proposal is said to also clarify the scope of activities and bodies covered, to strengthen the monitoring and enforcement of the Register’s Code of Conduct for lobbyists and to simplify and improve the quality of data through streamlined input requirements and increased quality control. Registrants who fail to comply with the Code of Conduct could face temporary suspension of their interactions with the institutions or removal from the Register.

Transparency International – EU Office however has qualified the new proposal as timid and cosmetic. According to Transparency International EU, the European Parliament and the Council is where the resistance to reform is coming from. To date, national governments have not joined the voluntary register and have clearly indicated that any proposal that would include Member States’ permanent representations in Brussels would not be up for debate.

Further information on the proposal can be accessed here.

The position of Transparency International EU Office on the subject can be found here.

These documents include trilogue dates and summary agendas; the positions of both co-legislators on the Commission’s proposal; and the names of the decision-makers present in trilogue meetings. Documents that track the main stages of the process should be published as soon as possible after the negotiations end.

The Ombudsman has also proposed that the institutions make available lists of documents tabled during trilogue negotiations to facilitate public access. The institutions should also develop a single, easy to use, database on which all the above information concerning trilogues would be published.

The full text of the press release can be accessed here.  

Participants from various EU member states discussed open budgets, the Panama Papers and apps that create a tighter link between citizens and institutions.

All about the initiative can be accessed here.

15.000 lobbyists have significant influence on decision makers in Brussels, more than in Washington D.C.. Citizens’ trust in EU-institutions is near the historical low. The EU has to visibly separate economic from political power to win back citizens’ trust. The 48 proposals in the report report aim to refresh the promise of the treaties that all citizens are equal before the EU institutions. It proposes to make the EU lobby register mandatory, to protect the integrity of MEPs, Commissioners and staff against conflicts of interest by independent oversight and to fully realise transparency and access to information.

More on the report and its adoption process – here.

Over the last year, there have been over 7,000 meetings between high-level Commission officials and lobbyists. With 75% of the total, meetings with corporate lobbyists dominate the Commission’s agenda and tech, finance and energy companies take the lead. These meetings, however, are only the tip of the iceberg as the new transparency measures do not apply to most Commission officials, such as the negotiating team for the EU-US Free-Trade Agreement (TTIP). More importantly still, for lobbyists seeking to influence the European Parliament and particularly the Council, none of the new transparency rules apply and their activities remain opaque.

“While the European Commission has taken some steps to improve lobby transparency, so long as the system remains voluntary and without proper monitoring the EU’s whole transparency regime is ineffective”, says Daniel Freund from Transparency International EU. “Given the dominance of corporate actors, the bare minimum to prevent undue influence and corporate capture is to have full transparency in all EU institutions and binding rules that apply to all lobbyists. We urgently need a mandatory register”, Freund continues.

As an example, the German Commissioner Günther Oettinger has had more meetings with Deutsche Telekom than almost all of civil society taken together.

“Looking at Oettinger’s lobby contacts it becomes clear that Telecom operators and Tech giants such as Google, Apple or Microsoft have the best access to the Commissioner in charge of regulating Europe’s digital economy. Companies and their representatives make up 93% of his meetings, which begs the questions of what access do companies have to those officials that currently do not report their meetings”, says Freund.

The full text of the press release can be found here.

През последната една година са декларирани над 7000 срещи между високопоставени служители на Европейската комисия и лобисти. 75% от всички срещи са с корпоративни лобисти, като доминират секторите банково дело, технологии и енергетика. Същевременно това е само върхът на айсберга, тъй като правилата за публикуване на лобистки контакти не касаят всички служители на Комисията, както и дейността на членовете на ЕП и на Съвета, посочват от Европейския офис на Трансперънси Интернешънъл.

Предвид доминацията на корпоративния лобизъм, спешно са необходими мерки за въвеждане на задължителен регистър. Правилата за деклариране следва да обвързват всички институции на ЕС.

Екипът на Европейския офис на Трансперънси Интернешънъл неотдавна създаде Integrity Watch – онлайн инструмент за анализ на лобистките контакти на всичките служители на ЕК с представители на бизнеса и гражданското общество. Инструментът показва например, че германският еврокомисар Гюнтер Отингер е провел повече срещи с Deutsche Telekom отколкото с всички представители на гражданското общество взети заедно. Гледайки контактите на Отингер, става ясно, че телеком операторите и ИТ гиганти като Google, Apple и Microsoft имат най-добър достъп до комисаря, отговорен за регулирането на европейската дигитална икономика. Компаниите и техните служители обхващат цели 93% от декларираните от него лобистки контакти. Това поставя въпроса какъв достъп имат тези компании до служители, които изобщо не подлежат на деклариране на своите лобистки срещи, допълват от Транспарънси-Брюксел.

Пълния текст на прес-съобщението можете да намерите тук.

Both organisations have long advocated for increased lobbying transparency. It is vital to reduce unethical lobbying, prevent undue influence and to ensure equality of access for all actors and organisations that seek to influence the decision-making processes.

On the other they we are concerned that the process promised by the Commission has not moved further in recent months. The expected proposal for a new Inter-Institutional Agreement (IIA) on a “mandatory Transparency Register” has not yet been delivered by the Commission. They ask the EP to ensure that the Commission prioritises and progresses the new IIA without any further delay.

They also request that the European Parliament stands by previous commitments to support a legally-binding lobby register. A legislative proposal has been demanded several times by the Parliament (in May 2008, May 2011 and most recently in April 2014) and it appears to us that this is an overdue and urgent necessity. Only through such a legislative proposal will the register become legally binding on lobbyists. Problems like law firms not joining or not disclosing their clients, and the lack of effective administrative sanctions in the current register require a legal approach.

This means that additional measures are necessary to ensure that unregistered lobbyists can no longer influence the EU decision-making process. Such measures should include:

• Only registered lobbyists should be able to get meetings. MEPs, especially the president, the vice-presidents, group presidents, committee chairs and rapporteurs as well as shadow-rapporteurs, should only meet with, or attend events organised by, registered lobbyists. It should be clear that those that do not provide a minimum of transparency and do not respect the basic rules laid out in the Code of Conduct for lobbyists would not be welcome in the Parliament.
• Lobbyists must be on the register should they wish to have access to Parliamentary premises for lobbying purposes. Visitors who are not on the register should sign a declaration that they are not a lobbyist when entering the Parliament.
• Lobbyists must be on the register should they wish to advise the Parliament as part of parliamentary hearings, inter-groups or in any other advisory function.
• Lobbyists must be on the register should they wish to organise or attend events at the Parliament, including those organised by third parties.

Furthermore, there is a strong role for the Parliament to ensure that:

• The public can verify that the above principles are respected by publishing meetings with lobbyists online, in the same way that the Commission has started to do since December 2014.
• More capacity and resources should be provided to the register secretariat so that they can properly monitor registrations and increase the number of checks to ensure that registrants’ information is meaningful, accurate, up-to-date and comprehensive.
• When lobby groups breach the rules of the register, the secretariat often only asks them to correct the data, without applying a sanction. This approach provides no incentive to avoid mis-reporting. We recommend that stronger sanctions are applied.
• Entries of all registrants which have been suspended or removed from the register should be kept and should remain visible to the public. This would make suspension or removal a more obvious sanction and allow the public to see past entries and track changes.

The full text of the open letter can be accessed here.

Today’s submission of complaints follows the launch of new lobby monitoring tools on www.integritywatch.eu in June 2015. The tools provide for the first time a comprehensive overview of lobby meetings of the European Commission and systematically analyse the declarations filed by lobby organisations with the Transparency Register. But findings also show the poor data quality of the register.

“A few simple plausibility checks reveal that data which lobbyists voluntarily file with the lobby register is inaccurate, incomplete or outright meaningless”, says Daniel Freund from Transparency International EU. “Among the hundreds of useless declarations we found organisations claiming to spend more than €100,000,000 on EU lobbying or having tens of thousands of lobbyists at their disposal. We hope that the Commission will swiftly follow up on our complaints and ensure that either the declarations are corrected or non-cooperative organisations are removed from the register.”

The full text of the press release by Transparency International-EU Office can be found here.

Analysis of the 4,318 lobby meetings declared by the top tier of European Commission officials between December 2014 and June 2015 shows that more than 75% were with corporate lobbyists. This compares to 18% with NGOs, 4% with think tanks and 2% with local authorities. Google, General Electric and Airbus are some of the most active lobbyists at this level, with 25 to 29 meetings each. Google and General Electric are also some of the biggest spenders in Brussels, each declaring EU lobby budgets of around €3.5 million per year.

Of the 7,908 organisations who have voluntarily registered in the EU Transparency Register – the register of EU lobbyists – 4,879 seek to influence political decisions of the European Union on behalf of corporate interests. Exxon Mobil, Shell and Microsoft (all €4.5-5m) are the top three companies in terms of lobby budgets according to their declarations made to the EU Transparency Register.

“The evidence of the last six months suggests there is a strong link between the amount of money you spend and the number of meetings you get”, says Daniel Freund from Transparency International EU. “Those organisations with the biggest lobby budgets get a lot of access, particularly on the financial, digital and energy portfolios.”

• Read the full press release here
• Download the findings here