Green campaigner: “NGO lobbying should be transparent too”[fr][de] 

Transparency campaigners received moral support from Siim Kallas last week when the Anti-Fraud Commissioner attended the launch of ALTER-EU, a new NGO coalition seeking to "end corporate privileges and secrecy around lobbying in the European Union".

De Clerck, a leading figure of ALTER-EU, is adamant that transparency in public affairs can only be achieved if lobbyists are obliged to sign up to a centralised web-based registry. This would record basic information about finances and who the lobbying organisations actually represent. 

He argues that self-regulatory codes of conduct, like the one developed by the Brussels-based Society of European Affairs Professionals (SEAP), simply do not work.

"I would only support a system where everyone - including NGOs - has an obligation to sign up to it, with an effective implementation and sanction mechanism. A code that fulfils these requirements has the same impact and effectively is a mandatory system." 

Sanctions for those breaking the rules would be the cornerstone of the system. They would apply to all lobbyists, including corporate representatives, professional public affairs consultants and NGOs.

"For lobbyists who do not register or who submit wrong information, the type of sanctions I would see would be to deny them access to European institutions for a certain amount of time."

"There could be a kind of 'black list' of lobbyists who do not fulfil the requirements." 

De Clerck suggests that all organisations with a lobbying budget of more than 20,000 euros a year or 5,000 euro for three months be told to register. 

"If such a system is put in place, the obvious organisations, NGOs and lobby firms will definitely fall under it. And of course, there will be a couple of lobbyists who will falsify the data to fall under the threshold. But that will only be 1 or 2 per cent of the total volume and I think it is more relevant to make sure that the system works for the majority."

He shrugs off critics who argue that a mandatory registry would be impossible to put in place as it would pose practical problems for the vast majority of lobbyists who are not based in Brussels and travel over from the member states. 

"There could be a minimum threshold. If they come twice per year to Brussels for one or two meetings, they would not have to fulfil all the requirements for registration in the database." 

Besides, de Clerck argues that making a distinction between Brussels and non-Brussels lobbyists simply does not make sense. 

"There are a lot of lobbyists from the member states who come on a very regular basis to Brussels. For them, it should not be any different [...]. They should also register. It is a web-based system so it is not a problem for them to fulfil the requirements. Lobbyists from outside the EU should also fulfil these requirements."

A criticism often put forward by those opposed to mandatory registration is that sanctions would be difficult to apply for non-Brussels lobbyists. But de Clerck thinks that the distinction does not stand up. If the sanctions are kept simple, he says, such as exclusion from meetings and consultations, it becomes irrelevant where lobbyists are from.

"I do not think there is a substantial difference between lobbyists based in Brussels and lobbyists based in one of the member states in relation to a possible sanction of this kind." 

De Clerck says that the threat of being blacklisted should be enough to prevent the vast majority of cases of misconduct. "Lobbying to a large degree depends on the credibility of lobbyists. If you are on a black list your credibility will drop."

Read the full transcript of this interview