Interview: Lobby group calls for single EU public affairs register

Anti-Fraud Commissioner Siim Kallas’s proposed public affairs register should be mandatory and applicable to both the Commission and the Parliament, the chairman of the European Public Affairs Consultancies’ Association (EPACA), José Lalloum, told EURACTIV in an interview.

The Commission is aiming to launch its lobbyists register in spring 2008 as part of its wider transparency initiative (see our Links Dossier). Commissioner Kallas has indicated that the EU executive would go ahead with creating its own register, with or without Parliament on board (see EURACTIV 10/10/07). 

However, the EPACA chairman insists that “it would certainly be better to build a system that applies to all the EU institutions”, saying that the transparency initiative’s weakness is that it only covers the Commission. “If you are building a house, you try to make it big and solid enough for your family and friends. If it is a small house built with fragile materials, then you won’t be attracting many”, he told EURACTIV.
 

Furthermore, Lalloum said that if the institutions do not consider the voluntary approach employed so far to be enough to gain citizens’ trust, then EPACA would prefer registration in the new register to be made mandatory. Although such a system would be “tough”, he believes it would be better “from the point of view of capturing everyone” and ensuring “a level playing field”.

Under a mandatory system, “you don’t have all the good guys from EPACA needing to walk naked in an environment where some others are still going to keep their suits on”, he said. Moreover, he said that signing the register must be made mandatory if the institutions want it to include financial disclosure. “A voluntary system requiring financial disclosure will undoubtedly distort the market”, he warned. 

Lalloum also indicated that its members would need sufficient motivation if they were to be persuaded to join a register requiring financial disclosure, for example, receiving an access badge to the European Parliament. Otherwise, “it is clear that […] we are being asked to do something impossible […] for no advantage at all”. 

On the issue of exempting law firms from disclosing their clients’ identities in the register, Lalloum said a level playing field was “essential” as “law firms are competitors to public affairs consultancies in the field of interest representation”. 

He rejected claims that EPACA’s members may attempt to reclassify themselves as law firms to avoid disclosing their income sources, but warned that “lawyers claiming that the rules should not apply to them while they are involved in competition cases leaves them with a lot of room for manoeuvre and possibly disguises their actual activity”. 

Finally, regarding a contest organised by a group of NGOs to identify Brussels’s ‘worst lobbyists’, Lalloum said it is difficult for him to convince his clients that it is not a good thing to be nominated. “I hope we get the prize,” he commented.

To read the interview in full, please click here. 

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