November 2, 2005 

Siim Kallas is Commission Vice-President for Administrative Affairs, Audit and Anti-Fraud

Lobbyists in Brussels, whether NGOs or professional consultants, should endorse common rules on ethics and transparency or face regulation, Commissioner Kallas has told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

Concerning the Transparency Initiative, recent press reports indicated that Commission President José Manuel Barroso is against the idea of compulsory registration of lobbyists in Brussels. Is that true?

No, that's not true. He has not expressed anything like that. On this particular part, we have had no debate. We will go ahead with these two possibilities [voluntary or compulsory registration] but of course my own idea is not to have a compulsory or a mandatory regulation. Firstly, because if we had mandatory regulation, then it would take years and we would definitely face a lot of legal questions on how to define the lobbyists. 

I hope we can create these two things on a voluntary basis:  some kind of register and some kind of obligation to provide the wider public with information. 

Could it be that there are still some cultural differences in the Commission between, say, Nordic and Latin understandings of the concept of transparency?

No, this would be too simple. Of course there are people who consider that there is enough transparency already. It is this kind of argument that creates the suspicion that we, as decision makers, have something to hide. But I think that now this approach has been finally accepted by everyone in the [commissioners'] cabinets.

In a speech you gave on 20 October, you seem to leave public affairs professionals (consultants as well as NGOs) with a choice: either adopt a common code of conduct with common enforcement rules or face some kind of regulation. Is this really the case?

I don't present any ultimatum. But if people failed to establish a common code of conduct or common principles or to register, then we should go ahead with compulsory rules.

So if NGOs and professional lobbyists failed to adopt common rules, you would consider the other option?

Yes. The CONNECS database can be used anyway as a basis to register. All sorts of organisations could be brought into CONNECS. But it remains to be seen what sort of things need to be registered. The main issue is to determine who is the actual employer of an organisation.

Could registration cover for instance Think Tanks, law firms etc.? Would these people need to register as well?

Part of society is heavily criticising Think Tanks and say some are also lobbying organisations, but they are a bit different. If Think Tanks are actually involved in lobbying, then public information should be made available. But, yes, why not have public information about think thanks? 

There is no doubt that Think Tanks, in the voluntary registration scenario, could provide the same information as other organisations. If it is mandatory, then you get into the problem of defining whether they are lobbying or not and many of them will argue they are not in order to escape registration. This proves the point I made in the beginning, that the voluntary scenario is the Commission's preferred option. 

Why do you use the word lobbying? Most organisations will not define themselves as doing lobbying but public affairs, which has a wider definition. Think Tanks for example, do influence public policies, it is their raison d'être, therefore they are in public affairs… 

We shall see and we shall think about it. Lobbying is very American and sometimes holds a special flavour of "business lobbying". But let's think about it… 

Concerning law firms, a number of them do have public affairs activities perhaps even lobbying. Should they be covered by your initiative and subject to possible mandatory registration?

In the compulsory registration scenario, it is with law firms that we would face the biggest difficulties. They have special rights and special regulations and matching all these things can be difficult. But if they define themselves as active in public affairs, it should be normal that this information is made available. If we go for mandatory registration, this particular area is legally the most complicated. Therefore I would not expect big success in defining the activities of law firms.

There is another argument which says that most of the public affairs activities come from the member states themselves or from non-EU countries, whether they are in Brussels on a permanent basis or not. How can these people be taken into account in the mandatory or voluntary scenario? 

We have so far not considered state public affairs or state lobbying as a part of our initiative.  But information on member states' activities is anyway already available: all have a representation which does the same public affairs job. And it is clear who funds the permanent representations and who they represent. 

A number of non-EU countries spend quite a lot of money on public affairs, they may be quite influential and their interests may be legitimate. Why should they not be covered by transparency guidelines as well?

So far we have not thought about it, but non-EU countries would be very difficult to include. However, if they hire lobbying organisations, then these lobbying organisations must declare it.

In your last speech, you mentioned that policy makers should also be granted a confidential "space for reflection" when they interact with stakeholders, generally at early stages of policy definition. Where do you want to draw the line between this 'protected area' and what has to go public?

Mechanically, it is very difficult to draw this line. But I have my own experience in my previous job as minister of finance of Estonia. The Ministry of Finance was considered as the headquarter of all conspiracies in government with lots of rumours published in newspapers and so on. So we made a vast majority of our activities public. So what has to go public has to be decided by the person who is leading the dossier. For instance, things are absolutely different in foreign trade negotiations, which are largely covered by confidentiality. On other issues such as taxation, you can make information immediately available to the public for discussion. So where you draw the line is actually a political decision which is made on a case by case basis.

Controversies have recently broken out in some EU countries over how farm subsidies are being used and who benefits from them. How do you think transparency should apply on this issue? What should be the Commission's and the member states' responsibilities there?

The Commissions' position is: "We can do what we can do". First of all, we can advertise the issue, which is what we have done to a very large extent. Secondly, we can fulfil the desire to have some kind of central web portal which allows, for instance, data published in the UK to be also accessible from Estonia, as it can be searched in the Commission's database. 

This is because the decision [to publish data on CAP beneficiaries] is fully in the hands of the member states. Some publish the data but most said it is a matter of confidentiality. One year ago this was not a matter of discussion among member states at all and I am very happy that this has started to go ahead like a snowball. Now the UK, Netherlands, Slovenia and Belgium are making this data public and this is bringing a healthy debate.

In your recent speech, you draw a distinction between three categories of funds:  Those directly managed by the Commission, those directly managed by the member states and those managed by both. For this intermediate category, will the Commission pro-actively publish data without letting member states veto that decision?

No we cannot. What we can do is to suggest a common methodology so that country data about end recipients of EU funds is presented in the same format and accessible on the same Internet platform. This platform would allow cross-analysis, to check for example if a given company is 'milking' the system in different countries.  

And then as a second step (which the Commission will hopefully also decide on the 9th of November), we can make a suggestion to make it an obligation for member states to disclose data about end recipients of EU funds.

So this is something which may be envisaged in the Green Paper? 

Yes. The Green Paper will launch the debate for the introduction of a legal obligation for member states to disclose this information. 

There are also practical reasons for the current situation: member states are the only ones to have the data on end beneficiaries which so far we do not possess. 

But, if I understood right, for shared management funds, the Commission does possess the information, doesn't it?

Yes, but for CAP data, it is received only for the Commission's control purposes. We are legally prevented from releasing it. 

The central database on EU funds end beneficiaries that you talked about would therefore put in place a 'name and shame' system: countries which do not publish data would be easily put under the spotlight…

I prefer to talk about best practice.

Concerning transparency of EU institutions, there is a history to this debate, especially the fall of the Santer Commission which was caused by a scandal. This led the Commission to clean up its act. Could one say that the Parliament now needs to follow and clean up its act as well? 

Interinstitutional relations are very sensitive ones. The Commission cannot accuse or force an institution to take action. But I have been in Parliament several times and talked openly about ethical issues. The truth is that, if something happens in one institution it hurts all the others. And Parliament, in COCOBU [Budgetary Control Committee], was supportive about these issues. You know, the declaration of economic interest is available for some MEPs but it is quite limited…

So you recommend more disclosure by MEPs?

Yes, because some MEPs are very angry that they have been open about their other sources of income and are now being accused of having some kind of business interest. And they are angry that those who were not so open are not being accused in the same way. 

The concrete proposal there would be to establish an inter-institutional committee, a group of experts, which could evaluate possible conflicts of interests.  We cannot create a ready-made text which would meet all the challenges of tomorrow. You cannot write a legal text which foresees what is going to happen next week.

Do you think this big transparency debate will actually lead to decisions?  Is it not rather a safeguard so that, in the event of a big scandal, the Commission can say: "we have tried, we have done what we could"?

Directly, the Commission is responsible for its own members and its own staff. In this sense, we are responsible if something happens. 

How about the Council? Should there be a disclosure of interests for them? 

Tony Blair has made some proposals about increased transparency in decision-making in Council and we fully support it of course. 

Concerning economic interests, it is the same ethical field, so of course information should be made available, but on the other hand, the diplomats who are in charge of their representations, are mostly civil servants who are not prohibited to have any kind of economic interests at all. 

Nobody in any one of the three big EU institutions is entirely safe from a scandal which could emerge in another institution. That must be the common understanding.

Have you seen openness from the Council on these issues? Traditionally, it is the most secretive of all three EU institutions…

So far, frankly speaking, we have not been in very serious discussions in Council about these issues. We finalise our own proposal, then we go to the other institutions to talk about it.

Related Links:

Commission Vice-President Siim Kallas: Speech - Transparency restores confidence in Europe (20 Oct. 2005)

Commission Vice-President Siim Kallas: European Transparency Initiative