Cc: Commission Vice-Presidents Siim Kallas and Margot Wallström, Secretary General Catherine Day
From: Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU)
Date: Brussels, 13 February 2008
Subject: Implementation of European Commission lobbying register
Dear President Barroso,
We have grave concerns over the way the Commission is currently developing the lobbying
register that you announced in the 2007 communication: Follow-up to the Green Paper
‘European Transparency Initiative’.
As you may know, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU)
is a broad coalition of over 160 public interest groups, trade unions, academics and public affairs
firms, advocating, among others, effective measures that will allow public scrutiny of EU
decision-making.
When we recently met with your services to present ALTER-EU’s benchmarks for the EU lobbying
register (attached to this letter), we learned that in the Commission’s current specifications for
the register, two crucial pieces of information are missing: the register will not include the names
of individual lobbyists and it will lack meaningful information on how much money is spent on
lobbying.
When Vice-President Kallas presented the European Transparency Initiative, he underlined that
increased transparency on lobbying will help ensure that an Abramoff-style scandal never happens
in the EU. We wish to alert you that with the very limited information requirements currently
proposed by your services, the register would not permit journalists and others to expose such
types of lobbying scandals.
We do not understand why your services wish to exclude lobbyists’ names from the register.
Existing lobbying transparency registers in the US and Canada contain the names of individual
lobbyists, as does the register of the European Parliament. If the new EU lobbing transparency
register does not allow the identification of individual lobbyists, it cannot serve as a tool to
investigate ‘conflicts of interest’ and ‘revolving doors’. Leaving out lobbyists’ names would put
the credibility of the European Transparency Initiative at stake.
We also wish to alert you that financial disclosure in broad ranges of € 50,000 or – even worse –
flexible ranges of 10% of the total lobbying income of a lobby firm1, could allow big lobbying
funders to hide within seemingly wide strategic alliances. For example: a company spends
€ 50,000 on a lobby campaign and enlists two other companies who symbolically support that
campaign with € 1,000 each. The system would not distinguish between large and small donors
within the strategic alliance, and the register would thus fail to provide transparency. The US
register shows that it is possible for lobby firms, with little administrative effort, to report their
lobbying income related to each of their clients every six months, rounded off to the nearest US
$ 10,000 (which compares to bands of € 7,500 ).
If the EU register will not answer simple questions like “who are the lobbyists?” or “how much
money is spent on lobbying by whom?”, it would be useless.
Three years have passed since the Commission first announced a lobbying transparency register.
As EU Member States are in the process of ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, we feel it is more
important than ever for the Commission to show its commitment to deliver greater transparency in
EU decision making. We hope that you will instruct your services to go forward and launch a
register that will list the names of lobbyists, the interests they represent, and the finances involved.
These are the three most basic, objective data for public scrutiny.
ALTER-EU has been broadly supportive to the European Transparency Initiative so far. We wish
to continue supporting your efforts to deliver greater transparency, and thus hope that you will
ensure the register prepared by your services will meet basic transparency benchmarks. Needless
to say, if the Commission register were to be practically useless for transparency purposes, we
would have to reconsider our support.
On the basis of our recent discussion with your services, we would like to meet with you as soon
as possible.
Yours sincerely,
The ALTER-EU Steering Committee:
- Paul de Clerck (Friends of the Earth Europe)
– William Dinan (Spinwatch)
– Marc Gruber (European Federation of Journalists)
– Ulrich Müller (LobbyControl)
– Jorgo Riss (Greenpeace European Unit)
– Erik Wesselius (Corporate Europe Observatory)
The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU)
1. With an annual lobbying income of around € 2 mn in 2007 for a medium sized lobby firmt, a range of 10% would imply that
each category would represent € 200,000 . Consequently, lobby contracts for an amount of € 5,000 would be in the same category
as contracts for € 190,000 , rendering the information useless.
To: Commission President José Manuel Barroso
Cc: Commission Vice-Presidents Siim Kallas and Margot Wallström, Secretary General Catherine Day
From: Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU)
Date: Brussels, 13 February 2008
Subject: Implementation of European Commission lobbying register
Dear President Barroso,
We have grave concerns over the way the Commission is currently developing the lobbying
register that you announced in the 2007 communication: Follow-up to the Green Paper
‘European Transparency Initiative’.
As you may know, the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU)
is a broad coalition of over 160 public interest groups, trade unions, academics and public affairs
firms, advocating, among others, effective measures that will allow public scrutiny of EU
decision-making.
When we recently met with your services to present ALTER-EU’s benchmarks for the EU lobbying
register (attached to this letter), we learned that in the Commission’s current specifications for
the register, two crucial pieces of information are missing: the register will not include the names
of individual lobbyists and it will lack meaningful information on how much money is spent on
lobbying.
When Vice-President Kallas presented the European Transparency Initiative, he underlined that
increased transparency on lobbying will help ensure that an Abramoff-style scandal never happens
in the EU. We wish to alert you that with the very limited information requirements currently
proposed by your services, the register would not permit journalists and others to expose such
types of lobbying scandals.
We do not understand why your services wish to exclude lobbyists’ names from the register.
Existing lobbying transparency registers in the US and Canada contain the names of individual
lobbyists, as does the register of the European Parliament. If the new EU lobbing transparency
register does not allow the identification of individual lobbyists, it cannot serve as a tool to
investigate ‘conflicts of interest’ and ‘revolving doors’. Leaving out lobbyists’ names would put
the credibility of the European Transparency Initiative at stake.
We also wish to alert you that financial disclosure in broad ranges of € 50,000 or – even worse –
flexible ranges of 10% of the total lobbying income of a lobby firm1, could allow big lobbying
funders to hide within seemingly wide strategic alliances. For example: a company spends
€ 50,000 on a lobby campaign and enlists two other companies who symbolically support that
campaign with € 1,000 each. The system would not distinguish between large and small donors
within the strategic alliance, and the register would thus fail to provide transparency. The US
register shows that it is possible for lobby firms, with little administrative effort, to report their
lobbying income related to each of their clients every six months, rounded off to the nearest US
$ 10,000 (which compares to bands of € 7,500 ).
If the EU register will not answer simple questions like “who are the lobbyists?” or “how much
money is spent on lobbying by whom?”, it would be useless.
Three years have passed since the Commission first announced a lobbying transparency register.
As EU Member States are in the process of ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, we feel it is more
important than ever for the Commission to show its commitment to deliver greater transparency in
EU decision making. We hope that you will instruct your services to go forward and launch a
register that will list the names of lobbyists, the interests they represent, and the finances involved.
These are the three most basic, objective data for public scrutiny.
ALTER-EU has been broadly supportive to the European Transparency Initiative so far. We wish
to continue supporting your efforts to deliver greater transparency, and thus hope that you will
ensure the register prepared by your services will meet basic transparency benchmarks. Needless
to say, if the Commission register were to be practically useless for transparency purposes, we
would have to reconsider our support.
On the basis of our recent discussion with your services, we would like to meet with you as soon
as possible.
Yours sincerely,
The ALTER-EU Steering Committee:
- Paul de Clerck (Friends of the Earth Europe)
– William Dinan (Spinwatch)
– Marc Gruber (European Federation of Journalists)
– Ulrich Müller (LobbyControl)
– Jorgo Riss (Greenpeace European Unit)
– Erik Wesselius (Corporate Europe Observatory)
The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU)
www.alter-eu.org / info@alter-eu.org
1. With an annual lobbying income of around € 2 mn in 2007 for a medium sized lobby firmt, a range of 10% would imply that
each category would represent € 200,000 . Consequently, lobby contracts for an amount of € 5,000 would be in the same category
as contracts for € 190,000 , rendering the information useless.