TRACKING THE REAL INFLUENCE OF LOBBYING AT EU LEVEL AND TI RECOMMENDATIONS

Lobbying of the European Union (EU) needs to become more transparent and open to public scrutiny. EU policy-makers should therefore collect and disclose comprehensive information on who influences whom in the EU decisionmaking process to ensure a level playing field for all interest representatives and thus balanced legislative outcomes. It will help to ensure that legislation has the public interest at its heart and that the risks of corruption, conflicts of interest and regulatory capture are reduced. The aim of such disclosure is to document lobbyists’ influence on policies and legislation. Whether annexed to legislative reports or published in ‘real time’ on official websites, such initiatives serve to inform the public which interests have shaped draft and final legislation. Despite increasing calls for the introduction of ´legislative footprints` to better track and monitor the real level of influence of lobbyists on the decisions that are taken by the democratically elected representatives and administrations, its use is still new to the European institutions. Regulatory efforts and emerging good practice can be found in the European Commission and the European Parliament. All these initiatives fail however to provide comprehensive data that would inform EU citizens on who sought to influence which legislative act, how and with which human and financial resources and through which channels.

The European Commission

The European Commission should expand and improve its existing initiative as laid out in its recent Decision of 25 November 2014 on the publication of information on meetings held between Members of the Commission and organisations or self-employed individuals.  

1. The recording of meeting data should be expanded to everyone involved in the EU’s policy-making process. Apart from Commissioners, Cabinet members, and Directors-General, all EU public officials that are directly involved in the policy-making process should record data on their lobby contacts.
2. Any contribution that has had or sought to have a tangible influence on the draft legislation or the political process should be disclosed in a comprehensive manner - regardless whether this comes in form of a written contribution or a personal meeting. For meetings the recorded data should include the date, name of the person taking the meeting, the lobby organisation, including the Transparency Register ID (only registered lobbyists should be met), the client (if applicable – and including the Transparency Register ID), also the individual lobbyists’ name and, most importantly, the topic of discussion and the specific legislative file, if applicable.
3. The information on lobby influence should be made available to the public in one centralised online database. Lobby contacts are currently published on a total of 89 different websites, including on the 28 individual websites of Commissioners, on the 28 websites of their cabinets and 33 websites of the Directorates General. The European Commission should strive to simplify the access to information by making it available in one centralised database equipped with solid search functions, and in a consistent format. A necessary next step to enhance transparency and accountability of the EU institutions is also to link the disclosed data on lobby meetings with information from the already existing Transparency Register, which should become the one-stop-shop for all lobbying activity, detailing real-time lobby meeting information in combination with human and financial capacity invested by lobbyists to shape the EU’s legislation and information on the beneficiaries of EU funds. Also written input by stakeholders to consultations that is found to be influencing the decision of the policymaker should be made publicly available in a more systematic and easily searchable manner, for example on the Your Voice in Europe website, which could also be linked with the Transparency Register.
4. Commission staff should be required to file information on lobby contacts online as close to real time as possible, at the latest within the two week period foreseen for EU senior officials.

European Parliament

The European Parliament should make it obligatory for rapporteurs, shadow rapporteurs and committee chairs to publish a legislative footprint. MEPs, their offices and political groups should publish detailed information on lobby contacts as a matter of best practice.

1. Members of the European Parliament, their Accredited Parliamentary Assistants, Political Group staff and relevant administrators in the Committee Secretariat and research departments should record and disclose information on who has sought to influence them, when and how, as they are also regularly approached by lobbyists. This should be required for all lead MEPs, including rapporteurs, shadow rapporteurs and chairs. At a minimum, rapporteurs should annex a list of all relevant lobby contacts during the drafting process to Committee Reports due to their particularly influential role in the legislative process. In any case, only lobbyists that are registered in the EU’s Transparency Register should be met with.
2. Any contribution that has had or sought to have a tangible influence on the draft legislation or the political process should be disclosed in a comprehensive manner. This should include contacts, including scheduled meetings with lobbyists, participations in briefings or conferences and written input. Exceptions should take account of the European Commission guidelines. Where contacts are not aimed at influencing legislation (e.g. constituent inquiries or personal contacts); or where publication would endanger the life, integrity or privacy of the individual, interfere with court proceedings or administrative procedures, the information should be adapted or withheld from publication. Along the lines of the recently introduced practice of the European Commission, the recorded data should however include: the date; the name of the person taking the meeting (MEP, APA, etc.); the lobby organisation, including the Transparency Register ID (only registered lobbyists should be met); the client (if applicable – and including the Transparency Register ID); the individual lobbyists’ name; the topic of discussion (in bullet points or keywords); and the concrete legislative file, if applicable.
3. In order to ensure that recorded and disclosed information is as useful as possible to the public, the information on lobby contacts should be published in a standardised online format on the MEPs websites and collated in one central European Parliament online database that is easily accessible and searchable by all. This way, Parliamentary Committees rapporteurs and shadow rapporteurs can immediately and in a less burdensome way extract the lobby information necessary for the annex to parliamentary reports. Such recording should become standard practice by all to track the influence of lobbyists on parliamentary documents as well. This would facilitate citizens’ access to information and allow for a broader overview of who is contributing to which legislative initiative.
4. European Parliament staff should be required to file information on lobby contacts online as close to real time as possible, latest within the two week period that applies to senior staff in the European Commission.

The Council

A meaningful recording of lobby contacts for the Council must include the Council secretariat and the Permanent Representations of member states in Brussels, but also lobby contacts that take place in the 28 national capitals. Since the latter falls under the competence of member states we have decided not to focus on this aspect in this paper.