19/03/2025
A fresh corruption scandal, this time involving Chinese tech giant Huawei, has again rocked the European Parliament, leading to arrests and searches by Belgian authorities. This raises big questions about lobbying and its limits, especially after the 2023 Qatargate affair, which captured Europeans’ imagination and drew across-party condemnation. Yet it manifestly failed to provide good enough reforms to prevent this new scandal from happening.
But how does lobbying actually work in the EU?
What Is a Lobbyist?
- The EU does not use the word “lobbyist” but rather “interest representative” to designate individuals and entities advancing their interests before the EU institutions.
- According to current EU lobbying rules (that is the 2021 inter-institutional agreement), interest representatives are individuals or groups who try to influence the formulation or implementation of policy or legislation or the decision-making processes.
- They can shape policy through meetings, events, consultations, or open letters.
- While we often hear about lobbying from big tech, pharma, and agribusiness, it also exists for many other sectors – virtually all of them.
What Are the Rules?
- Lobbying is legal—insofar as the EU must consult stakeholders while preparing or reforming its policies —but there exist limitations and transparency obligations
- To enter the European Parliament, lobbyists must be listed in the Transparency Register—a public database tracking who is lobbying, their objectives, budgets, and meetings with officials.
- MEPs cannot accept money, gifts over €150, or any rewards in exchange for political action.
- MEPs must report their (scheduled) meetings with lobbyists to ensure full transparency on the nature of the interests they influence their thinking and acting
- When leaving office, MEPs can’t lobby the EP and members for 6 months (an extremely short and meaningless cool-off period)
- Those who break the Code of Conduct by breaching any of the above ethical standards can incur a variety of sanctions, ranging from reprimands to suspension of voting rights and even a ban from the Parliament.
Loopholes and Weak Enforcement
- While registration is mandatory for access to the European Parliament, lobbying outside—through conferences, political events, or think tanks—remains largely unregulated.
- While meetings with third parties must, in principle, be disclosed, MEPs can still have side jobs (and over ¼ of the Parliament does so), such as working as lawyers or consultants, leading to potential conflicts of interest.
- The system is self-policed, meaning MEPs oversee their own enforcement. This creates political disincentives for stricter oversight.
The Bottom Line
Alberto Alemanno, founder of The Good Lobby and Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law, has a forthcoming book (The Law and Governance of the EU Public Ethics System: An Institutional Perspective) ) in which he argues that the current system is designed not to work. “There are no political incentives to enforce the rules, as stricter oversight could affect all political parties,” he says.
The rules exist, but enforcement is weak. With nearly 14,000 registered lobbying organisations and increasing scrutiny, the EU faces growing pressure to strengthen its ethics system.
Will this latest scandal lead to real change? There’s a sentiment of fatigue and normalisation around this fresh scandal, suggesting that even this scandal alone won’t lead to structural reforms.
A case in point is the boycott by the EPP and far-right political groups in setting up the EU ethical standards body agreed last Spring through an inter-institutional agreement.