CIAO DATE: 06/2011
May 2011
Centre for European Policy Studies
While the European Parliament is in many ways more transparent and more accessible than many of the EU’s national parliaments, the code of conduct for lobbyists and the Parliament’s own Rules of Procedure are rather vague. As a result of the ‘cash for laws’ scandal, the EP President, Jerzy Buzek, has established a working group to draw up a new set of rules to govern the access and behaviour of lobbyists and to formulate a code of conduct for MEPs. In this Policy Brief, Maja Kluger Rasmussen, visiting research fellow at CEPS, evaluates the shortcomings of the Parliament’s current Rules of Procedure governing MEPs’ relations with outside interest groups and offers other suggestions as to how the European Parliament can reform its rules governing MEPs and their relations with lobbyists.
Resource link: Lobbying the European Parliament: A necessary evil [PDF] - 144K