Author: Â Ester Arauzo, Olivier Hoedeman and Rachel Tansey
ALTER-EU report about the European Commission and European Parliament’s ‘Joint Transparency Register’
We have now reached a critical juncture in the debate on lobbying disclosure and reform in Brussels. The European Commission and European Parliament are reviewing their Joint Transparency Register, and considering how best to secure lobbying transparency at EU level. All the signs emerging from the Commission are that they would prefer to retain their voluntary and ‘light touch’ approach to lobbying regulation.
The findings of this report show that this approach is unsustainable, misguided and simply not credible. The experiment with the voluntary system to date, and the evidence presented in this report, clearly shows that the effectiveness of the voluntary register is unconvincing at best, and dismal at worst.
Publication date: Thursday, June 20, 2013