The nearly 30,000 registered meetings between MEPs and lobbyists over the last three years are just the tip of the iceberg, transparency campaigners have said.
In a report published on Monday (5 December), the NGO Transparency International analysed the 28,000 lobby meetings that were published by MEPs between June 2019 and July 2022. During this period, just over half of MEPs used the Parliament’s publication system.
The total number of meetings disclosed has fallen from 9,700 meetings in the first year looked at, to 9,300 in the last year.
Meanwhile, the reporting revealed wide disparities between national delegations. While all of Luxembourg’s six MEPs published meetings, 95% of Sweden’s EU lawmakers and 93% of Denmark, the figures for Latvia, Cyprus and Greek MEPs dropped to 25%, 17% and 10% respectively.
The reporting requirement, however, only applies to the chairs of the European Parliament’s standing committees, as well as rapporteurs and shadow rapporteurs; the MEPs tasked with drafting and negotiating the Parliament’s position on a file.
All other MEPs publish their meetings on a voluntary basis.
The reporting regime was set up in January 2019 as part of moves to track how lobbying influences laws and to record contact between lobbyists and public officials. MEPs can publish meetings on their personal page on the Parliament’s website, from where the data was collected by Transparency International.
Green and liberal party MEPs were most likely to record lobbying meetings, according to the data.
Civil society activists also point out that a large proportion of lobbying on EU policies and law covering amendments and the drafting of reports is with parliament officials and MEPs’ assistants, who do not fall within the scope of the reporting requirements.
“There are two main issues with lobby transparency in the Parliament. First of all, there is no oversight or enforcement of the rules. The second issue is that there are many other people involved in lobbying who are not covered by any rules, including Accredited Parliamentary Assistants and Political Group Advisors,” said Vitor Teixeira, Senior Policy Officer at Transparency International EU.
Oversight of the lobbying industry in Brussels, and its impact on EU lawmaking, continues to be patchy, and reliant on voluntary codes.
The EU institutions established a ‘transparency register’ for lobbyists, but this does not require them to record information on the clients they represent and who they target. In comparison, the United States Lobbying Disclosure Acts and Foreign Agents Registration Act require lobbyists to disclose their clients and contracts with them.
The European Commission, meanwhile, requires Commissioners and senior officials to make public their meetings with lobbyists and other pressure groups. However, no watchdog has been tasked with overseeing whether officials comply with the rules.
[Edited by Nathalie Weatherald]
Source: euractiv.com
