Brussels, 01/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 1 March, the European Commission decided to launch a public consultation into the transparency register, in order to gather the opinions of the stakeholders on a future obligatory system for all of the institutions of the EU.
Do you agree with the Commission that the Council of the EU should participate in a new inter-institutional agreement on an obligatory register? This is one of the fundamental questions asked by the Commission in the 12-week public consultation, launched to garner views on the registration scheme for interest representatives.
Frans Timmermans, the first vice-president of the Commission, argues that “we need to go further by establishing a mandatory register covering all three institutions, ensuring full transparency on the lobbyists that seek to influence EU policy-making”.
The consultation is in two parts: the first contains simple questions aimed at non-specialists, whilst the second is targeted at users of the current system for the registration of lobbyists' activities in Brussels. The public consultation will run until 24 May, and the Commission will use the responses to feed into its proposal later this year.
Draft inter-institutional agreement
The new system, which the Commission intends to propose in the form of a draft inter-institutional agreement, will go beyond the current register, which is managed jointly by the European Parliament and the Commission, but which is not obligatory and does not cover the Council. The current register had 9,286 entries as of 1 March 2016, up from 7,020 on 31 December 2014, before the current Commission took up its duties and carried out a number of internal reforms. In its political orientations for 2015-2019, the Commission announced its intention of presenting a proposed inter-institutional agreement on an obligatory transparency register for the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)