International

This week it will become clear whether the European Parliament is serious about transparency or whether all of its pronouncements on the issue have been mere election rhetoric. On 14th April lobby watchdog ALTER-EU will ask all candidates in the forthcoming European Parliament elections to sign a pledge: are they for transparency or not? The SP’s European team will be keeping a close eye on this and will continue to report. We’ll see clearly which candidates really want to tackle this. On Tuesday the EP will vote on the evaluation of the transparency register, which, as SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong explains ‘is incomplete. Lots of lobbyists have yet to register. That’s why I’ve proposed a number of improvements, including an obligation on European Union officials to meet only with registered lobbyists.’ De Jong adds that ‘this is also the week in which we’ll find out whether EP president Martin Schulz can stay in office following his recent attempt to cover up matters that impugn his own integrity.’

The numerical strength of the financial lobby in Brussels is even greater than was expected: this was the most significant result included today in a report from Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) entitled The Fire Power of the Financial Lobby. The report shows that the financial sector spends more than €120 million per annum on lobbying in Brussels, for which it has available more than 1,700 lobbyists. Erik Wesselius, No 4 on the SP’s list of candidates for May’s European elections , says that ‘we knew that the bank lobby has, since the banking crisis, used every means to influence European decisions affecting the sector, but the figures which have now been published exceed all previous estimates. Banks, investors and speculators have their fat fingers in the pie when it comes to Brussels decision-making. The SP wants to see a Europe in which the interests of the citizens come first, and not those of the banks.’