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Last Updated: Jul 31st, 2011 - 17:29:39 |
EU lobbyist register boosted by 'market forces'
By Honor Mahony
Jun 22, 2009, 18:38
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EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - One year after its launch, the European Commission says pure "market forces" are ensuring its lobbyist register is a success but critics say the refusal to make it mandatory is a fatal weakness as law firms and think-tanks drag their feet in signing up.
With 1,600 entries on the register, representing thousands of individual lobbyists, and a signing up rate of about 30 to 40 a week, the commission says its "voluntary approach (..) has been confirmed by these numbers."
Corporate inhouse lobbyists and trade representatives account for around 900 of the entries with the system asking for the area of interest, number of employees and amount of money spent of representing its interests to the EU. NGOs make up most of the rest.
Jens Nymand Christensen, the commission official in charge of the issue, said commission staff is now being actively encouraged to ask lobbyists or companies looking for some face time if they are in the register.
"There is an issue of credibility if they do not want to sign up to the register," he noted, adding: "I always ask now whether those who ask to see me are on the register."
The "market forces are working" he said, although he admitted that a company not being on the register does not mean it will not get an audience at the commission.
Law firms and think-tanks remain the most recalcitrant groups.
Transparency commissioner Siim Kallas has had an "intense" exchange with bar associations in Brussels as they argue that they cannot undermine client privacy by revealing who they represent.
The commission concurs, but argues that when the law firm is engaging in straightforward lobbying, then it should be treated as any other lobbyist.
Some think-tanks argue they should not have to put themselves on the register as they do not see themselves as typical lobbyists.
But despite its tussle with these two groups, the commission is not about to change its policy on keeping the register a voluntary system.
"Right now the numbers do not point to an instant need to look at this," said Mr Christensen on making the register mandatory.
The lobbyist register, designed to shed some light on the estimated 1000s of lobbyists working in Brussels and influencing EU policy-making, has often been in the spotlight over recent month, and not just over the voluntary/mandatory debate.
The list has been exposed to contain fake companies while some organisations have signed up by mistake, boosting the registers' tally. In addition, there is no real way of checking whether a company's declared financial interests are real and the fact that no individual names are listed means it is difficult to identify potential conflicts of interest. The register also gives no detail on the areas that is lobbied on.
The commission says it has received a "not insubstantial number of complaints" to do with alleged erroneous information - usually by one register entrant about another - and has sat down with these registrants but says it has found "nobody that was consciously misleading." To date no name has been struck permanently off the register.
Corporate Europe Observatory, a transparency pressure group, recently released a scathing assessment of the register saying it was "as useful as a phonebook without any numbers."
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