Negotiations begin on a mandatory Transparency Register for the three EU institutions 

Stqarrija 
 
 

Aqsam din il-paġna ma' ħaddieħor: 

Negotiators from Parliament, Council and the Commission met on Monday to discuss how to strengthen the EU Transparency Register.

At their first interinstitutional negotiation, EP negotiators, Vice-President Sylvie Guillaume and AFCO Chair Danuta Hübner, together with Monika Panayotova, Deputy Minister for the Bulgarian Presidency, and Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans held an in-depth exchange of views on making certain types of interactions with their respective institutions conditional on interest representatives registering in the Transparency Register.

Interest representatives would need to sign up to the Register and abide by its Code of Conduct if they wish to seek to influence the EU institutions, according to the so-called principle of meaningful conditionality. This principle would ensure for example that meetings and access to EU institutions' premises are subject to interest representatives fulfilling that condition.

Setting up a mandatory Register would represent the most significant improvement to the Transparency Register since its launch in 2011. Applying the principles of the Register to all three institutions would send a strong message to European citizens about the high levels of accountability shared by the institutions ahead of the elections to the European Parliament in spring 2019. 

The three institutions agreed on the next steps for the negotiations, including a commitment to ensure that the process is highly transparent. Notably, they agreed to host information sessions for stakeholders on the state of play, with a first session to possibly be held before the summer.  Details of the information session will be published on the Joint Transparency Register Website in due course.

Quotes

“Together with my colleague, Danuta Hübner, we are committed to achieving an inter-institutional agreement, to work towards creating a new culture of transparency among the EU institutions. We also call for the new Transparency Register to be ambitious and cover indirect lobbying in order to better reflect how influence on decision-making takes place”, said EP negotiator Sylvie Guillaume (S&D, FR).

“While confirming the involvement of all three institutions, the main challenge is to get equal commitment from all three”, said EP negotiator Danuta Hübner (EPP, PL).

Background

The European Commission presented its proposal for a new inter-institutional agreement on a mandatory Transparency Register for lobbyists covering the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission on 28 September 2016. The proposal aims to strengthen the framework for a transparent and ethical interaction between interest representatives and the three institutions participating in the new scheme. Since 2011, the Parliament and the Commission have jointly operated a public register for interest representatives, aiming to increase the transparency and accountability of the EU decision-making process. The Council has been an observer to the current scheme since 2014.

On 15 June 2017, the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament, bringing together the Parliament’s President and political group leaders, approved the Parliament’s negotiating mandate.

The Council adopted its negotiating mandate on 6 December 2017 and also decided to make it public.