In a recent special report, the European Court of Auditors examined whether the EU Transparency Register, the EU’s database where interest representatives disclose their lobbying activities in the European institutions, is a useful means of providing transparency of those activities.
The current Transparency Register contains loopholes and blindspots
Originally conceived in 2011 via an Interinstitutional Agreement between the European Parliament and Commission, the Transparency Register promised to improve the transparency and accountability of EU policy making. More than a decade later, the verdict is clear: The current Transparency Register contains various loopholes and blind spots and it must therefore be reinforced. “The EU transparency register must be bolstered so that it doesn’t turn into a paper tiger,” said Jorg Kristijan Petrovič, the member of the Court of Auditors that led the work on the report.
Whereas the report finds that the 2021 Interinstitutional Agreement on the Transparency Register, which underpins the Register, “contains the main elements required by international principles for a lobbying framework,” the implementation of these provisions remains flawed.
Specifically, the report finds that the Transparency Register’s disclosures relating to spontaneous meetings are often missing, that the institutions’ approach to lobbying disclosures is uncoordinated, and that the enforcement measures to compel lobbyists to comply with the rules are lacking.
A power imbalance between corporations and civil society
A robust system to monitor the lobbying activities of interest groups is essential to guarantee a healthy political environment. As the Court of Auditors points out: “Lobbying is an essential democratic tool that allows organisations and individuals to provide input for policy and decision-making.”
However, a flawed Transparency Register amplifies the capacity of corporations to influence EU policy making and exacerbates the imbalance in access to power that exists between civil society organisations and the corporate sector. The EU institutions will not be truly accountable to the public unless the current framework is fixed. The Good Lobby’s founder Alberto Alemanno has been arguing for a revision of the Transparency Register, most notably by rendering fully mandatory
“The original sin of the EU Transparency Registry lies in its voluntary nature and ensuing absence of oversight and enforcement by its Secretariat. Unless the EU embeds its interest representation regime into a legally-binding act, no stakeholder will take its abeyance seriously enough to attain its declared goals of full transparency. ”
The aforementioned Interinstitutional Agreement is set to be reviewed next year in 2025.