Lobbying transparency a must if less wealthy interest groups are to be heard

From Erik Wesselius

Mr. Rogier Chorus, President of the Society of European Affairs Professionals (SEAP), dismisses Commissioner Kallas’ recent proposal for mandatory reporting and registration lobbying at the EU institutions (‘Fighting funding fraud’ in European Voice, Letters, 10- 16 March).

But SEAP’s voluntary Code of Conduct cannot be considered a serious alternative to mandatory EU rules on lobbying transparency. SEAP’s Code of Conduct is voluntary and only covers a minute fraction of all lobbyists active in Brussels (141 out of 10,000+ lobbyists). The code provides no external transparency, which is desperately needed in order to enable the European citizens to scrutinise EU decision-making processes.

To test the current level of lobbying transparency in Brussels, Corporate Europe Observatory recently conducted a survey among 35 of the major Brussels-based PR and PA firms. We asked these firms if they had lobbied the EU institutions on behalf of clients on the proposed EU system for Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation of Chemicals (REACH), and if so, we asked for a list of clients, the relevant budgets and an overview of the lobbied EU institutions.

We only received three written responses to our inquiry, all from firms indicating they had not been active on REACH. In the United States, our survey would have been superfluous.

Under the provisions of the U.S. Lobbying Disclosure Act, the PR and PA firms would have been obliged to submit these data to a public register that is accessible through the internet (even for non-US citizens).

Under the US rules, organisations spending less than $22,500 on lobbying during a semi-annual period are exempted from the filing requirements. A similar threshold clause in a future EU Lobbying Disclosure Act would ensure that smaller and less wealthy interest groups can make their voices heard at the EU institutions without bureaucracy and high expenses.

This clearly shows that the voluntary codes on lobbying transparency currently promoted by the lobbying profession in Brussels cannot compete with a mandatory system like the US Lobbying Disclosure Act. Therefore, Commissioner Kallas’ initiative to introduce mandatory transparency rules on lobbying at the EU institutions merits broad support, also from the lobbying profession itself.

Erik Wesselius, Amsterdam