Reform of EU lobbying, only counts direct lobby?

Publication date: 
Friday, November 18, 2016
Author: 
Angelone Francesco
Media title: 
informazione libera

The proposal submitted by the European Commission on the revision of the Transparency Register is arousing, predictably, a heated debate.

It appears that it circumscribes the lobbying to "interactions" with policy-makers and decision-makers and, therefore, should be considered too ambiguous and timid . 

Excerpt: 

Indicative example of Fleishman-Hillard , the lobbying firm that says the higher costs to their operations (more than 6.25 million euros per year), which has 48 passes to the European Parliament and employs 26 lobbyists full time. To think that such costs correspond only to direct interactions with legislators in Brussels is somewhat unrealistic when considered that these are only 15 in nearly two years. No less significant is the example of Burson-Marsteller which employs 35 full-time lobbyists, has 29 passes to the Parliament, spends more than 5 million euros a year and almost two years has participated in only four high-level meeting with the Commission. It can challenge, as does LobbyFacts, which in this kind of meeting customers participate directly and, instead, the lobbyists have previously prepared the field with lower-level meetings. Thesis contradicted, however, by an article of ALTER-EU ( Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation ). In short, it is in the activity behind the scenes that the lobbying firm (and law firms) spend energy and resources and is especially for those that are paid .