Commission gives guidance on rules for lobbyists

The European Commission is to present by the end of the year guidelines on how lobbyists should comply with new financial disclosure rules, officials have confirmed.

The guidelines are intended to increase the chances that a majority of Brussels-based firms will sign up to the proposed register of interest groups and to meet lobbyists’ complaints that they have not received sufficient detail from the Commission on how to meet the financial reporting requirements.

But the European Public Affairs Consultancies Association (EPACA), which represents many of the bigger lobbying firms, is still saying that its members should not join the register unless it and the accompanying financial reporting rules are mandatory.

A Commission official said that it would provide a "manual" on how firms might calculate their income from lobbying activities and the relative weight that each specific client represents. Lobbying firms have complained that the Commission’s plans for a voluntary register and financial disclosure are unclear and could cause problems, especially for multinationals operating in the US where they have to meet strict financial reporting rules.

News of the planned manual comes as the Commission puts the finishing touches to a draft code of conduct to which all lobbyists will have to sign up as a precondition for joining a register of interest groups that is being launched in spring 2008.

The code will be published for consultation with interested parties "in a few weeks", officials said. It is expected that it will be closely aligned with existing codes drawn up by the main professional lobbyists’ bodies in Brussels, the Society of European Affairs Professionals (SEAP) and EPACA. Interest groups will have to sign up to the Commission’s code or show that their codes are in line with the Commission’s requirements for transparency and good practice including financial disclosure.

There are increasing signs that, after initial reservations, a large number of private sector lobbyists will sign up to the code. Lyn Trytsman-Gray, president of SEAP, said on Tuesday (9 October) that her organisation would offer its members guidelines on how to subscribe to the Commission’s register. "The Commission’s register will only be of value if the information provided by registrants is accurate and comparable. Our aim is to ensure that the information gathered will be valuable and not just a collection of disparate and inconsistent facts." SEAP represents public affairs professionals working for trade associations, corporations and consultancies.

But José Lalloum, chairman of EPACA, told MEPs on Monday (8 October) that his organisation could not recommend to its members that they sign up to the voluntary register, because it believed it could not work on a voluntary basis.

"If the Commission and other EU institutions are convinced publication of such financial information is essential, this can only be achieved by a mandatory system," he said.

"EPACA does not want to boycott a voluntary register but how can we possibly recommend to members to sign such a register when we would be in breach of contractual obligations to our clients and when the market would be distorted?"

Lalloum was speaking at a European Parliament hearing on lobbying. Support for tougher rules for lobbyists appears to be growing among MEPs. Finnish centre-right MEP Alexander Stubb, who is drafting a report on lobbying, said that he was moving towards supporting a mandatory scheme and favoured "some degree of financial disclosure". Stubb said that he would propose that all reports adopted by Parliament should be accompanied by a "footprint", a list of lobbyists that the MEP who drafts a report has seen during the drafting process. MEPs should also publish a file of all documents which have been given to them during the drafting process, Stubb added.

UK Socialist MEP Richard Corbett said that the footprint idea was a good one. Paul de Clerck of Friends of the Earth, a member of the steering committee of Alter-EU, a pro-transparency campaign group, agreed that the footprint was "a good thing".

Stubb said that he would propose that the Parliament toughened its rules on what lobbyists must do to have access to the Parliament and MEPs, although he said that this might happen at a later stage.

The European Commission is to present by the end of the year guidelines on how lobbyists should comply with new financial disclosure rules, officials have confirmed.