Half of all MEPs do not disclose any meeting with lobbies
Regulation of the European Parliament is highly voluntary. Compared to 90 percent of Swedish, Danish or Finnish MEPs who disclose meetings with interest groups, only one out of ten Greek, Polish and Bulgarian MEPs do so.
Photo: © European Union 2014 – European Parliament (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Half of all MEPs do not disclose any meeting with lobbies
Regulation of the European Parliament is highly voluntary. Compared to 90 percent of Swedish, Danish or Finnish MEPs who disclose meetings with interest groups, only one out of ten Greek, Polish and Bulgarian MEPs do so.
Photo: © European Union 2014 – European Parliament (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Just over half of all MEPs have reported at least one meeting with lobby groups. This means that 346 of the 705 members of the European Parliament have never reported meeting with any lobbyists. And the current situation allows them to do so.
Regulation of lobby transparency at the European Parliament is highly voluntary and only requires accountability of any meetings with private stakeholders, public bodies or NGOs whose goal is to influence European institutions’ policies or decision-making. And it doesn’t cover all parliamentarians: only rapporteurs or committee chairs for each report. Although the Parliament has just approved a tightening of lobby group registers , there is still much work to be done.
Thus, between mandatory and voluntary disclosure of meetings, 359 MEPs, just over half of the chamber, report engaging in at least one meeting. Those who haven’t reported anything may not have been in contact with any lobby groups, but that’s highly unlikely. The differences according to origin are notable: over 90% of Swedish, Danish and Finnish MEPs have reported meetings. The worst examples come from among Greek, Polish, Bulgarian and Latvian MEPs, of whom fewer than 13% have reported such meetings.
Thus, besides country of origin, the level of transparency is also related to the political parties themselves. Only nine out of 74 MEPs from the Identity and Democracy group, which comprises far-right parties such as Lega (Italy), Rassemblement national (France) and Alternative für Deutschland (Germany). disclosed their meetings. The largest groups fall more or less in line with the average, with some 40.57% of European people’s parties and 58.62% of socialists including information about some meetings on their online profiles. The Greens almost fully publish their meetings: 70 out of 73 members have reported their meetings.
A large part of the accountability strategy goes through the Transparency Register . Companies, trade associations, consultancies, public bodies, think-tanks, universities, etc. that seek to influence European policies are registered here.
Beyond what member states apply
Despite everything, for Daniel Freund MEP, the transparency rules at European institutions ‘‘are quite good’’. “In fact, our rules go well beyond what most member states have implemented on the national level”. In Spain’s case, the Congress approved in April 2019 a first agreement on the transparency of meetings between MPs and lobbyists, which was reissued on 1 October 2020 and extended to the Senate.
Two years after its first entry into force, only a third of MPs publish their agendas, albeit incompletely, as many only report on their parliamentary activity, with no mention of their meetings with lobbyists, as