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Tightening up on the pressure groups

• Mark Mardell
• 8 May 08, 08:06 AM

It is a skill.

Working out which members of the European Parliament might change their minds and then change their vote.

Then doing whatever it takes, a pleasantly liquid lunch for some, a very sober technical report full of convincing graphs for others: it's all worth someone's hard cash.

There are apparently 15,000 lobbyists in Brussels, so the people who pay them must think they are getting their money's worth.

MEPs will vote today on some first steps to tighten up the rules on lobbying in both the European Parliament and the Commission.

At the moment, lobbyists can get a full pass only if they sign up to a set of rules: in future all of them will have to take the pledge.

If they then break the code (), they'd get kicked off the authorised list and could face other sanctions, such as fines.

Equal treatment

Lobbying is defined as "activities carried out with the objective of influencing the policy formulation and decision-making processes of the European institutions".

This includes business, big and small, and think tanks, pressure groups and trade unions. Industrialists and environmentalists would be treated alike.

They will also be required to say how much they are being paid, and by whom.

MEPs' committee reports also may come in future with a list of lobbyists who've had a "significant input" into the document.

This comes with a new piece of jargon: it's called measuring the "legislative footprint".

Stretching a point

All this is based on former MEP Alex Stubb who has recently become Finland's Foreign Minister. .

And .

Get stretching and posing, Miliband.

But I digress.

Although by no means tough enough for some, especially the greens, the new rules proposed by the flying Finn are considerably tougher than the rules in Westminster, where there is, I suppose, lobbying for stricter rules on lobbying than the current voluntary industry code.

Is this one area where MEPs are setting the pace? Should Westminster follow suit? And do you agree with MEPs that lobbyists perform a valuable function in informing their debates?

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