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EU needs mandatory lobbying transparency |
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European Voice (site requires subscription)
Vol. 11 No. 9 : 10 March 2005
Fighting funding fraud
From Rogier Chorus
Commissioner Siim Kallas in his Nottingham speech, on which European Voice reported ('Kallas to improve EU's transparency', 3 - 9 March), rightly aims at more transparency as a tool in fighting fraud. But a mandatory regulation on reporting or registering lobby activities is not the way forward.
Contrary to what Kallas states in his speech, self-regulation of European Affairs practitioners is rigorous and effective. The Code of Conduct used by the Society of European Affairs Professionals (SEAP), the professional organisation of European Affairs practitioners, contains an effective sanction procedure, including expulsion from the organisation, is subscribed to by all its members and serves as an example for all European Affairs practitioners in Brussels, who by the way are invited to join SEAP. Its members are asked to be transparent in declaring the interest they represent.
Bureaucratic controls and reporting requirements will not improve transparency; they will make it harder for smaller interests to make themselves heard. The main benefit of the EU civil society model over the American alternative is precisely that every interest can make itself heard without bureaucracy and high expenses.
Rogier Chorus
SEAP president
_________________________________________________________________________________
Tue, 15 Mar 2005
From: Erik Wesselius
Corporate Europe Observatory
To:
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EU needs mandatory lobbying transparency
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).
However, 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
Corporate Europe Observatory
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
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