Brussels, Madrid, Cologne, 30 May 2014 – Civil society groups from across Europe this week called on newly elected Members of the European Parliament to make an urgent priority of tackling the problem of corporate lobbying in the next parliamentary term.
The call by members of the Alliance for Lobby Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER_EU), of which Access Info Europe is a Steering Committee member, went out to all 751 new MEPs and in particular to the 174 who signed a pre-election pledge under the Politics for People campaign to ‘’stand-up for citizens and democracy against the excessive lobbying influence of banks and big business.”
The Politics for People pledge campaign [2] was one of the most successful civil society pledge campaigns around the 2014 European parliamentary elections, being signed by a total of 1338 candidates. The picture shows the 13 Spanish MEPs who signed the pledge and were elected.
The new MEPS are also being urged to promote a European parliament which operates in the public interest with strong ethics and transparency rules.
Pam Bartlett Quintanilla, transparency campaigner for Access Info said:
“The first action MEPs can take to show their commitment to stricter lobby regulations is to influence the appointment of key European Parliament positions, such as ensuring that the post of vice president for transparency is occupied by a transparency champion. No less important is to put pressure on the new European Commission President to be far more ambitious about curbing undue lobby influence than the previous Commission was.“[4]
In the briefing circulated this week to the newly-elected MEPs, the ALTER-EU is calling for concrete action on the revolving door issue [5], a strengthened code of conduct for MEPs [6], tackling unbalanced Commission expert advisory groups [7] and the transition to a mandatory lobby register.[8]
Olivier Hoedeman, campaign coordinator for Corporate Europe Observatory and member of the ALTER-EU steering committee said:
“The strong commitment to our campaign shows that there is growing concern about the impact of corporate lobbyists in Brussels. This creates a unique opportunity for strong progress in transparency and ethics rules to curb undue corporate influence in EU policy-making.”
Find here the briefieng to be sent to pledge signers who are now elected MEPs. 
Find here a document with all the 174 elected MEPs who signed the pledge.
For more information please contact:
Olivier Hoedeman, campaign coordinator for Corporate Europe Observatory,
olivier@corporateeurope.org | +32-4-7448-6545
Pamela Bartlett Quintanilla, researcher and campaigner for Access Info,
pam@access-info.org | +34 91 365 6558
Max Bank, campaigner for LobbyControl
m.bank@lobbycontrol.de | +49-221-169-6507
Notes for the editors:[1] http://politicsforpeople.eu/en/solution/[2] The Politics for People campaign is run by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU), together with a broad coalition of civil society organisations and trade unions from across Europe, including Access Info Europe (Spain), AK EUROPA (Austria), Citizen Network Watchdog (Poland), Corporate Europe Observatory (Brussels), Diritto di Sapere (Italy), GONG (Croatia), Lobbycontrol, (Germany), the ÖGB Europabüro (Austria), Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (Finland), Young Friends of the Earth (Ireland).
For a full list of active partners across 19 EU member states, see http://politicsforpeople.eu/en/about-us/[3] http://www.alter-eu.org/documents/2014/05-0[4] A recent report issued by the ALTER-EU coalition concludes that the Barroso-II Commission has failed to make meaningful progress on key issues such as lobby transparency, revolving doors, advisory groups and access to documents. http://www.alter-eu.org/sites/default/files/documents/FINAL%20ALTER-EU%20Barroso%20II%20overview.pdf[5] http://www.alter-eu.org/revolving-doors/[6] A detailed briefing released last week by three civil society groups (who are also members of Politics for People), collates cases of potential conflicts of interest and breaches of ethics rules by former MEPs. These include one MEP who failed to disclose stock options worth several million euros, four who maintain side-jobs with large corporations and lobby groups, and one who submitted over 200 amendments handed to him by industry lobby groups. The lack of enforcement of the European Parliament’s ethics rules leaves the integrity and the credibility of the parliament at risk. http://www.foeeurope.org/sites/default/files/news/briefing_mind_the_gap_foee_ceo_lobbycontrol_130514.pdf[7] http://www.alter-eu.org/sites/default/files/documents/Broken_Promises_web.pdf[8] http:/www.alter-eu.org/taxonomy/term/23