Commission launches consultation on Transparency Register, inviting stakeholder views on a future mandatory system for all EU institutions 

The European Commission is launching a public consultation on the Transparency Register to gather stakeholder views on a future mandatory system for all EU institutions.

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 31 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.