Unit 1.3- Regulation of Lobbying in the EU

Question 1

Lobbyists

Answer 1

People seeking to influence legislative processes

Question 2

Registration of lobbies in the EU:

Answer 2

• Voluntary
• No sanctions if you decide not to t

Question 3

Specific regions with permanent offices in Brussels:

Answer 3

• Catalonia
• Scotland
• Lower Saxony
• Venice

Question 4

the European Council- lobbying

Answer 4

Requires much more delicate work in professional lobbying, given its high representation and the definition of the agenda that occurs within it.

Question 5

Lobbying is an opaque activity:

Answer 5

In the context of lobbying, opaque refers to a lack of transparency in how lobbying activities are conducted. Opaque lobbying means that the actions, funding sources, and true intentions behind lobbying efforts are not clear or openly disclosed. This makes it hard for the public, policymakers, or watchdog groups to track who is behind certain lobbying campaigns, what their motives are, and how they are influencing policy.

With this in mind, the EU has been developing important advances to reduce such pressures on its community bodies.

Question 6

Lobbyist agents are:

Answer 6

trustees and at the same time legitimizers of political trust in democratic institutions.

The rectitude, probity and transparency between them and the political actors are a sine qua non requirement for the guarantee of the system and specifically, to socially legitimize the exercise of professional lobbying as part of the system.

Question 7

Community legislative institutions:

Answer 7

Are of special relevance for lobbying, since external relations with individuals and interest groups will be exercised from their organization and from the internal rules of procedures and introduction of laws and agreements.

Question 8

Regulation of lobbying:

Answer 8

The regulation of lobbying is related to the quality and depth of democracy.
The institutional interaction between the State and the agents-actors of civil society are ultimately the mechanisms to avoid the lack of ethics, opacity and potential corruption of lobbyists in their professional practice.

Question 9

The Transparency Registry

Answer 9

n the summer of 2011, there was an agreement between the European Parliament and the European Commission for the establishment of a “Transparency Register for organizations and self-employed people who participate in the preparation and application of Union Policies”, whose scope of application will be to record all the activities that are carried out “in order to directly or indirectly influence the processes of elaboration or application of policies and decision-making of the Union institutions, regardless of the channel or medium of communication used”

Question 10

Code of Conduct

Answer 10

In this sense, the European Parliament approved in 2012 a “Code of conduct for members of the European Parliament in matters of economic interests and conflicts of interest”, where its parliamentarians must record the income from activities remunerated by outside the Chamber, in line with the provisions of 2011 and following the policies initiated in 1996.

Question 11

The registered lobbyist groups must:

Answer 11

• They will always indicate their name and the entity or entities they represent or for which they work;
• They will declare the interests, objectives or ends that they pursue and, where appropriate, will specify the clients or members they represent;

Question 12

LEgislative footprint

Answer 12

For the rest, the regulation includes the so-called “legislative footprint”, by virtue of which parliamentarians must attach a document that lists all the groups with which they have maintained contact during the preparation of the report in question.

Question 13

Criticism and conflict by the EU regulation:

Answer 13

• criticism of the voluntary nature of the register by NGOs as it even shows the absence of a real supervisory zeal on the part of the European institutions, which means that many pressure groups no longer register, or in a flow of information that is insufficient and even often unreliable esteem, because either the business figures and the names of the clients or contacts are not provided, or they are masked behind improbable acronyms or denominations, in clear violation of the Registry’s rules.
• some of the most important companies are absent
• official data doesn’t represent the real magnitude
• the spending is not correct

Question 14

Measures taken to hinder the activity of non-registered pressure groups:

Answer 14

• limited access to the European Parliament buildings
• also other events
• still far from full transparency