Watchdog: Half of EU lobbying disclosures are faulty
By Quentin Ariès
9/7/15, 1:54 PM CET
Transparency International, a watchdog group, charged today that more than half of the entries on the EU’s lobbying disclosure register are “inaccurate, incomplete or meaningless.”
The group filed 4,253 separate complaints to the joint transparency secretariat of the European Commission and the European Parliament, out of a total of 8,427 entries in the EU Transparency Register as of September 7.
“A few simple plausibility checks reveal that data which lobbyists voluntarily file with the lobby register is inaccurate, incomplete or outright meaningless,” said Daniel Freund from Transparency International. “Among the hundreds of useless declarations we found organizations claiming to spend more than €100 million on EU lobbying or having tens of thousands of lobbyists at their disposal.”
The group is calling for those organizations to correct their declared lobbying costs, and to include the salaries they pay lobbyists as part of the total amount. But the joint secretariat set up by the European Commission and the European Parliament to monitor the entries on the Register has little power to enforce the accuracy of the information provided by lobbying organizations.
The EU is preparing to start negotiations on plans to make it mandatory for all lobbying organizations to sign up to the register. However, no concrete agenda had been revealed by the Commission to announce its proposals.
source: Politico.
By Quentin Ariès
9/7/15, 1:54 PM CET
Transparency International, a watchdog group, charged today that more than half of the entries on the EU’s lobbying disclosure register are “inaccurate, incomplete or meaningless.”
The group filed 4,253 separate complaints to the joint transparency secretariat of the European Commission and the European Parliament, out of a total of 8,427 entries in the EU Transparency Register as of September 7.
“A few simple plausibility checks reveal that data which lobbyists voluntarily file with the lobby register is inaccurate, incomplete or outright meaningless,” said Daniel Freund from Transparency International. “Among the hundreds of useless declarations we found organizations claiming to spend more than €100 million on EU lobbying or having tens of thousands of lobbyists at their disposal.”
The group is calling for those organizations to correct their declared lobbying costs, and to include the salaries they pay lobbyists as part of the total amount. But the joint secretariat set up by the European Commission and the European Parliament to monitor the entries on the Register has little power to enforce the accuracy of the information provided by lobbying organizations.
The EU is preparing to start negotiations on plans to make it mandatory for all lobbying organizations to sign up to the register. However, no concrete agenda had been revealed by the Commission to announce its proposals.
source: Politico.
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