On 1 March, the Commission is launching a 12-week public consultation
to gather input on the current regime for registration of interest
representatives who seek to influence the work of the EU institutions
and on its development into a mandatory lobby register covering the
European Parliament and Council of the European Union as well as the
Commission.
First Vice-President Frans Timmermans said: "This
Commission is changing the way we work by consulting stakeholders more
and by being open about who we meet and why. 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. To help us get this proposal right, we hope to receive as
much feedback as possible from citizens and stakeholders from across
Europe on how the current system works and how it should evolve. A
European Union that is more transparent and accountable is a Union that
will deliver better results for citizens."
The Commission has
designed a two-part consultation which...
will allow for input from a
broad range of stakeholders, civil society and citizens. The first part
of the consultation does not require detailed knowledge of the current Transparency Register
and allows non-experts to respond on questions of principle and scope,
whilst the second section invites opinions on the practical functioning
of the current system from those who use it. The consultation documents
are available in all EU languages to encourage broad feedback. The
consultation will close on Tuesday 24 May.
The new system, which
the Commission intends to propose as a draft inter-institutional
agreement, would go beyond the current Register, which is jointly
managed by the European Parliament and Commission but is not mandatory
in nature and does not cover the Council. The Commission's own internal
reforms (see below) have already driven a sharp increase in entries on
the Transparency Register: as of 1 March, there are 9286 entries in the
current Transparency Register, up from 7020 on 31 October 2014, before
the Commission took office and implemented these reforms. The Commission
believes that working with the co-legislators in the European
Parliament and Council is an important way to ensure that citizens have a
full overview of which interest representatives are seeking to
influence the legislative process. The public consultation will feed
into the proposal the Commission will make later this year.
Background:
The Commission has already made significant reforms to its own internal rules to promote greater transparency. Under the Working Methods
of the Juncker Commission, as a rule, Commissioners will no longer meet
with any organisations which are not listed in the Transparency
Register. In line with the Transparency Initiative
introduced in November 2014 all meetings between interest
representatives and the Commissioners, their Cabinets, and Commission
Director-Generals must be published within two weeks of taking place.
In
its first year, the Commission published information on more than 6,000
meetings (approximately 5,500 for Commissioners and Cabinets and 600
for Directors-General). The introduction of this new system has
effectively made entry on the Transparency Register a mandatory
requirement for anybody who wants to meet the most senior EU
decision-makers and officials.
President Juncker's Political Guidelines and the Commission's 2016 Work Programme
both pledge that the Commission will make a proposal for a new
mandatory Transparency Register covering all the EU Institutions. The
Commission believes that citizens have the right to know who is trying
to influence the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission in
the context of the legislative process.
The planned changes to the Transparency Register are part of a broader commitment to reforming EU policy making. In its Better Regulation Agenda
presented in May 2015, the Commission committed to open up its policy
making process to further public scrutiny and input. New stakeholder
feedback mechanisms have already been set up, giving the possibility to
make views known to the Commission from the very start of the
preparation of an initiative on the basis of roadmaps and inception impact assessments, as well as after a proposal is adopted by the Commission, in order to feed into the legislative process in the Parliament and Council.
Tools also exist for stakeholders to comment on existing legislation within the framework of the REFIT programme. The website "Lighten the Load - Have your say"
is already operational and allows citizens to provide feedback on
existing EU laws. The contributions received feed into the work of the REFIT Platform, which advises the Commission on areas of legislation which could be reviewed to make EU law more effective and more efficient.
The Commission also adopted a Communication
in November 2014 outlining how more transparency will be injected into
the negotiations on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
(TTIP). The Commission considers it vital to ensure that the general
public has accurate and full information of the EU's intentions in the
negotiations.
