Brussels, 24/04/2009 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 22 April, the European Commission and the European Parliament agreed on several measures aimed at providing a framework for the activities of pressure groups in the EU. Members of the working group (Commissioner Kallas, MEPs Diana Wallis, Jo Leinen and Ingo Friederich) agreed on guidelines for a common register for interest groups (on which work will continue under the next mandate). A draft common code of conduct for lobbyists was also defined (to take effect when the common register has been set up). Pending the creation of this “one-stop shop”, Commission and Parliament have also launched a common web page, enabling the public to access information from both registers from a single starting point (See: http://www.europa.eu/lobbyists/interest_representative_registers/index_en.html ).
Although members of the working group describe the result as a serious step forward towards transparency, others consider the current proposal for a common register is the result of minimum negotiation. The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER EU) criticises the purely voluntary nature of the future register and considers the information it contains is incomplete, thus not providing a clear picture of the play of influences that surrounds the EU's decision-making process. “The result is a compromise register which creates a false impression of transparency, while most of EU lobbying will continue outside of any public scrutiny”, is the view taken by Erik Wisselius from the Corporate Europe Observatory. In the same press release, Christine Pohl from Friends of the Earth Europe (which is also part of the 160 members of the ALTER EU coalition) underlines the limits of the current experience. She says: “The big Brussels law firms, t hink tanks and many of the large corporations who are politically active in Brussels are in effect boycotting the register (Ed.: i.e. the Commission's optional register). The Commission sells the 1,340 registrations to date as a success, but only 538 of those organisations have an office in Brussels. In reality, at least 80% of all Brussels-based lobbying organisations still have not registered”. The Commission will be publishing an assessment of how its register is functioning within two months, one year after the register was set in place. (A.B./transl.jl)