Oi, lobbyists. Cough up your details – EU's new first vice-president Tech lobbyists trying to water down EU laws may soon find themselves in the spotlight, if new EU Commission supremo Frans Timmermans gets his way. The Dutch politician – who is set to take up the EC's number two spot next month with the official title “First Vice-President in charge of Better Regulation, Inter-Institutional …
Lobbying should never involve money... It is just legalised bribery.
I always think of Frank Herbert's God Emperor of Dune - there are two major sins, corruption by an official and attempting to corrupt an official; both punishable by death.
It would certainly make things much clearer and perhaps we won't end up with the broken US system, where big business steamroller their views into law, trampling the "little people" that the government and the laws are supposed to be representing and protecting.
The European Commission and Parliament have been open to a mandatory register for years, so this is hardly a breakthrough. The problem has always been getting Member States to agree to it - they are subject to lobbying in national capitals and in their representations in Brussels, but have so far resisted any efforts to have them included. I'd be surprised if Mr Timmermans manages to change this. That the EU's current, voluntary register is already significantly better than that which has been agreed in the UK indicates how far Member States need to budge on this.
But surely member states have nothing to hide and therefor nothing to fear
Probably true, provided you exclude the donations to our elected reps and the parties they belong to from companies which want to hide to effect of their lobbying on the taxes we have to pay (because they don't) and the laws we have that benefit them rather than us.
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