SPECIAL REPORT ON THE EU TRANSPARENCY REGISTER

SPECIAL REPORT ON THE EU TRANSPARENCY REGISTER

Source: European Court of Auditors 05/2024

The EU transparency register provides useful information to allow citizens to follow lobbying practices, but weaknesses and gaps reduce the transparency of lobbying activities taking place in the three signatory institutions.

The Transparency register is broadly consistent with international principles. There is a clear framework and a centralized entry point for lobbyists wishing to gain access to information on or influence the development of EU policies, decisions or law-making. The 2021 interinstitutional agreement includes eligibility provisions for applicants and requires adherence of lobbyists to a common code of conduct. However, we found that enforcement measures to ensure that lobbyists comply with registration and information requirements are limited. The 2021 interinstitutional agreement is not a legislative act and therefore cannot be used to impose sanctions on lobbyists, while they can be removed from the register in certain cases.

The 2021 interinstitutional agreement introduced the principle of conditionality, by which members or staff of signatory institutions are supposed to interact only with registered lobbyists. In practice, the institutions apply this principle in different ways. This has resulted in different approaches, including in relation to what constitutes a ‘meeting’, and ‘meeting with whom’, where registration of lobbyists in the transparency register would be a precondition for taking part in meetings or other activities. Only lobbying meetings with the highest-level decision-makers at the Council’s General Secretariat and the Commission are subject to this precondition. The Parliament does not apply the precondition to individual meetings with members and staff, except for certain meetings in the context of events and activities (e.g. committee hearings).

Recommendation 1 – Strengthen and harmonize the implementation of the EUTR framework

The signatory institutions should strengthen and harmonize the existing framework, either through the upcoming review of the interinstitutional agreement or through their implementing decisions, by:

1. providing a common definition of what constitutes a ‘meeting’ that captures all scheduled exchanges with lobbyists;
2. specifying that at least the senior management with policy-making and decision-making responsibilities (director and above) should meet only registered lobbyists.

Target implementation date: July 2025

The three signatory institutions have taken different steps to increase transparency and encourage registration, by means of complementary measures. This has led to increased publication of information on meetings and activities with registered lobbyists. Nonetheless, such information is not published systematically. While it is not possible to require prior transparency register registration for spontaneous meetings, lobbying interactions of this type may also be aimed at influencing policies and would not be covered by the transparency register framework.

Recommendation 2 – Publish information on non-scheduled meetings with lobbyists

The signatory institutions should publish information on non-scheduled meetings where lobbying has taken place.

Target implementation date: July 2025

The transparency register’s Secretariat is a joint operational structure set up to manage the functioning operation of the transparency register. The Secretariat’s working arrangements are not formalized, and its joint nature requires there to be significant coordination. The Secretariat does not have rules of procedure specifying how the three institutions should work together to coordinate its work on tasks such as distribution of workload between institutions’ staff or handover of cases. This increases the risk to operational efficiency.

The Secretariat checks the quality of registrants’ data either at the time of application, following complaints, or on an ad-hoc basis. This means that, once registered, only some of the registrants are subsequently checked to ensure that their data is up to date and compliant with any new requirements. While the Secretariat’s IT system flags data quality risks for specific registrants, these are not systematically followed up. We identified problems with data quality, such as duplicated registrations, inconsistent or incomplete financial data, and missing mandatory data. We also found insufficient documentation of checks. We noted recent improvements in the Secretariat’s checks.

There is a risk that NGOs funded by third parties can avoid disclosing information about their funding sources by declaring that they represent only their own interests or the collective interests of their members. This is because registrants’ choice of interest representation category is based on self-declaration. While there are some instructions for registrants about this, we did not find evidence that the Secretariat systematically checks these declarations.

Recommendation 3 – Improve data quality checks

To improve the quality of the transparency register’s data, the Secretariat should:

1. plan regular data quality checks so that all registrants are checked at least once over a period of 3 years, and systematically check those registrants where automated controls have identified risks;
2. check completeness and accuracy of financial data on EU grants (e.g. cross-checking with the Commission’s accounting system);
3. provide clear guidance and systematically check the validity of interest representation declared by all applicants and registrants;
4. document all data quality checks in its IT system, including those checks which do not identify problems.

Target implementation date: End 2025

Disclosure of lobbying activities aims to provide sufficient and pertinent information on key aspects of lobbying activities to enable public scrutiny. However, the EUTR’s public website has significant limitations in this regard. Some important data, such as Parliament meetings, and historical data on re-registered entities is not available. Furthermore, the website does not provide aggregated data on lobbyists and their activities in a user-friendly, interactive way.

Recommendation 4 – Improve the user-friendliness and relevance of the transparency register’s public website

The Secretariat should improve the relevance and user-friendliness of the transparency register’s public website by:

1. providing aggregated information on lobbyists and their activities in interactive dashboards and scoreboards, thereby allowing users to analyse and compare the data available from different sources;
2. integrating and linking information about lobbyists in the transparency register with published information about their lobbying activities, including meetings with members and staff of the institutions (including MEPs);
3. making available all historical information about lobbyists which have been removed or suspended from the transparency register, including their lobby meetings.

Target implementation date: End 2025