Public Affairs Networking
EU Transparency Register: on the right path? Not quite

The transparency of EU institutions’ interactions with interest representatives is again very much the talk of the town in Brussels. The occasion is the European Commission’s recent proposal for a third revision of the Transparency Register, based on an Interinstitutional Agreement (IIA) between the Commission, the European Parliament (EP), and the Council of the EU. The proposal aims to move from the current voluntary system to one where registration becomes a precondition for interest representation in the European Union (EU) by making certain interactions with decision-makers in all the main EU institutions conditional upon registration.

This is complemented with a strengthened code of conduct, which sets out the rules for all those who register and the underlying principles for standards of behaviour in all relations with EU institutions. The Transparency Register aims to regain the trust of EU citizens in the Union and gives them an insight into which organisations or people seek to influence EU law-making. Through the register, the public can see who is lobbying, who they represent, and how much money they spend on their lobbying activities.

The registration of lobbies is, however, not by itself a panacea for avoiding undue lobbying influence, but it is a step in the right direction to make the European Union more transparent about whom EU decision-makers consult. Overall, the Transparency Register can be regarded as a success since it was first introduced in 2008, at least if one observes the exponential growth in registrations and how external stakeholders use it as part of their good corporate citizenship. However, there is room for improvement. In this paper, we suggest avenues for further strengthening the register.

We also emphasise that regulating the conduct of lobbies is only one side of the transparency coin. The other side of the coin – the rules governing EU decision-makers – is equally important to increase transparency and to avoid conflict of interest. We focus the last part of the paper on how the EP’s rules governing Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and EU officials can be strengthened in line with the rules applied for European commissioners. Before doing so, we take a brief look back on the story of the register thus far.

A full copy of the European Policy Centre’s paper, is available at http://www.epc.eu/documents/uploads/pub_7298_eutransparencyregister.pdf

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