THE EUROPEAN UNION FORUM FOR ECONOMIC LOBBYING

Abstract

In Europe with the exception of Germany, European countries only began experimenting with lobbying tools after 2005, to the effect that currently some form of lobby registration is required in 12 European Union (EU) member states. The current system dubbed symbolically the Transparency Register (TR) that was launched in 2011 through an interinstitutional agreement (IIA) and is jointly managed by the European Commission (EC) and the European Parliament (EP). The TR is the successor of schemes that had previously been run separately by the two institutions, namely the quasi‐accreditation system of the EP, in place since 1996, and the EC's Register of Interest Representatives (ROIR), set up in 2008 as a voluntary database for groups. It is managed by a team of five staff members seconded from both the EC and the EP, who make up the Joint Transparency Register Secretariat (JTRS). Recent research states that between 10,000 and 90,000 lobbyists operate in Bruxelles . Many more lobbyists operate in states and localities throughout the country. The presence of this many lobbyists begs the following question: What kinds of organizations engage in lobbying? The short answer to this question is: all kinds. More specifically, political scientists have found that 12 basic types of organized interests engage in lobbying. What is the time dimension of decision-making? What is decision logic? What are the principles of persuasion? What does mixed lobbying mean?