Belgium, (Brussels Morning Newspaper) A group of MEPs has launched an initiative against “shady lobbying” and set up a website for officials and staff to report incidents.
Dutch MEP Paul Tang, co-leader of the initiative, pointed out that the website will serve as an early warning system and stressed that it is necessary due to lobbying pressure from powerful interest groups, according to The Guardian reporting on Thursday.
He warned that lobby groups employ deceitful practices, including astroturfing, which attempts to portray the lobbyists’ pushes as grassroots initiatives.
The encrypted website – lobbyleaks.eu – will allow users to leave anonymous warnings about suspicious lobbying, which will be investigated by Corporate Europe Observatory, a Brussels-based group that tracks lobbying in the EU, and German NGO LobbyControl.
Tang reminded that lobbying was “part and parcel of the work of politics” and expressed belief that it started to become a problem when lobbyists started to employ deceitful tactics such as hiding behind astroturfed organisations.
Commenting on talks about the Digital Services and Digital Markets acts, Tang noted that he did not expect tech giants would resort to “unconventional lobbying.”
Lack of awareness
He stressed that MEPs learned about the extent to which they were “bombarded” with targeted personalised ads on social media only after they adopted new rules, pointing out “we concluded that there was shady lobbying going on.”
As for astroturfing, Tang pointed out that he and his two Social Democrat colleagues filed complaints in October, accusing nine lobbying groups of “impersonating” small business organisations while not disclosing their financial ties to tech giants.
He noted that the EU transparency register has close to 12,500 entries, stressing that the only way lobbyists can gain access passes to the EP is if their companies are in the database.
The register is managed by the EU Commission, Council and Parliament, with Tang stressing the importance of removing any groups that misrepresented themselves from the database.
Former EC official Georg Riekeles previously warned that groups SME Connect and Allied for Startups, which present themselves as small business advocates, are sponsored by tech giants.
According to a 2021 report by the Corporate Europe Observatory, tech giants were the largest lobbyists in Brussels.
