Commission to register lobbyists’ funding

Lobbyists of the EU institutions will have to declare how they are funded, under the terms of a register of interests which the European Commission is about to create.

Siim Kallas, the commissioner for administrative affairs, will present to his fellow commissioners on 21 March proposals for a "register of interest representatives".

The proposals form part of the follow-up to a green paper on transparency that Kallas published last May. Lobbyists, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs), would be expected to declare who they represent, what their mission is and how they are funded. But the public affairs professionals are demanding that the Commission clarify what sort of details it will require about funding.

In a draft of the paper, Kallas argues that "the main objective of revealing how interest representatives are funded is to ensure that decision-makers and the general public can identify the most important driving forces behind a given lobbying activity".

The paper adds: "The Commission takes the view that to achieve this aim, it will suffice to request general information about the main sources of funding broken down by categories (ie, the percentage of public funding, membership fees etc). For public affairs practitioners this should also include an indication of the names of their main clients (though without disclosing the fees paid)."

The lobbying industry is worried that funding information, once disclosed, might be exploited, particularly by campaigning NGOs. Privately, lobbyists dispute the Commission’s assumption that funding is necessarily the best indicator of "the most important driving forces".

"There is not a direct correlation between money and influence. This isn’t Washington," said one lobbyist.

José Lalloum, chairman of the European Public Affairs Consultancies’ Association (Epaca), said: "There is a difference between transparency and voyeurism. There are certain things happening in commercial relationships that have nothing to do with transparency. Anything that has to do with fees charged by consultancies to their clients is a private matter."

But he added: "I would personally be in favour of a register where everyone, including consultants, lawyers and accountants, declares who they lobby for. If there were such a register, we would be part of it."

One of the Commission’s demands has been that the main professional organisations of Brussels lobbyists, Epaca, the Society of European Affairs Professionals and the International Public Relations Association, should together agree to standardise their various codes of conduct. Work is now intensifying on a common code, but the Commission appears to have given up hope that the NGOs might agree on a code with the public affairs industry. The Commission will on 21 March declare its readiness to draft a code of conduct for discussion with interested parties, which would then become an entry requirement for the register. Adherence to the code would be monitored by the Commission.

The Commission is not making signing up to the register compulsory, believing that a voluntary register can work. As an incentive to join the register, it is offering to send out alerts to those on the register about Commission consultations. The Brussels-based lobbyists have pointed out that this is hardly a great reward for specialists who are already closely following the EU’s activities.

The Commission has offered to strengthen its internet consultation standards to discriminate in favour of those on the register. "If organisations submit their contributions in the context of such a consultation they will be systematically invited to use the register to declare whom they represent, what their mission is and how they are funded," the draft says.

Erik Wesselius of Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), one of the NGOs which has campaigned most vociferously on transparency, said that making information available on the percentage of public funding and membership fees would not be of interest and was insufficient to keep a check on lobbyists. CEO, which wrote to all 27 commissioners yesterday (7 March), argues that every six months lobbying and consultancy firms should list the clients they work for, the institutions they approached, the topics they lobbied on and the amount of money received for the work. The names of lobbyists working on behalf of clients should also be published, Wesselius said. "If this is not in the proposal, it will not be credible," he said.

Lobbyists of the EU institutions will have to declare how they are funded, under the terms of a register of interests which the European Commission is about to create.

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