To get started, it must first be addressed some basic concepts, such as what an interest group is. According to the definition used by the European Union in the Green Paper on a European Initiative in favour of Transparency (2006), “they are all those activities carried out with the objective of influencing the formulation of public policies and the decision-making processes of the European institutions”. This term can correspond to different forms as lobbies, associations, NGOs, civic groups, non-profit organisations, single individuals…

As the European integration process deepened in the 80’s, this also involved an increase in the presence of interest groups that interacted with the European institutions, although its appearance can be tracked from the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community, but it was the European Single Act that made the difference. Its activity has only grown over the successive treaties’ ratification, that forced from the institutions a change in their relations (Winand, 2011; Greenwood, 1997). Attempts to create a register can be tracked from 1996, when the European Parliament first launches its own register of interest groups, and later, in 2008, the Commission also proposed its own voluntary registry. The aim of the indicative was to give more responsibility to the Union. However, the voluntary character and the little information demanded to register let other interest groups activities go under covered.  In 2011, both the European Commission and the European Parliament signed an Agreement that established the Transparency Register but with voluntary adhesion (Corporate Europe Observatory, 2011). However, the Council was left out of the agreement and it is least accessible.  A really important booster for the future regulations about the topic was the Juncker Commission (2014-2019) – through the Spitzenkandidaten, this process improved the affinity between the Commission and the Parliament, and to legitimize the election of European Commission president- which key objective was the policy of Better Regulation for a democratic change that improved the transparency of the process and the interest groups participation (Garben and Govaere, 2018). In 2020, the three main institutions -the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the European Union-, signed a common Agreement to establish a mandatory register.

The register allows citizens to find on the same page all the information about groups and organizations that are in contact with the EU institutions. The creation of a “legislative footprint” was also approved with the objective that when the deputies exercise a legislative initiative, they attach a document that includes a list of all the lobbies with which they have met in the process of writing the report. (European Parliament, 2011).

At the moment, the increase of power of the European institutions have attracted a numerous number of interest groups (Corporate Europe Observatory, 2011).  The interest groups have coexisted with the European institutions for years and are part of shaping the day-to-day life of the institutions. (Coen and Richardson, 2009) and following the data available from the Transparency Register of the EU, there are 12881 registered organisations, differentiated in -from the biggest to the smallest group-: the in-house lobbyists and trade/business/professional associations; followed by non-governmental organisations; then think tanks, research and academic ins; professional consultancies/law firms/employed consultants; organisations representing local, regional municipal authorities, other public or mix entities, etc; and the last one, organisations representing churches and religious communities. (Transparency Register, 2021). However, and due to the voluntary character of this Register, the data may vary, and we cannot know the real number. Among the people who exercise influence in the institutions they can be divided, following the Commission (2006) distinction, between non-profit organisations -such as national, European and international associations and federations-, and profit-making organisations (legal advisers, public-relations firms and consultants. The first are, in their majority, professional organisations, while the other are public or people who defend and represent the interest of third parties.  As David Lundy (2017) stated, there is a blurry line in the categories, but the main distinction between the activities exercised by salaried professionals and between the political activism of citizens is money. Hiring a person to exhort an influence in a legislative process can last for years, and the cost can be extremely expensive. The citizens are the base for any democratic institution and, taking into account EU rules, the participation of citizens in the elaboration of rules and in decision-making is foreseen in Article 11.1 of the TEU, that established that “the institutions shall, by appropriate means,  give citizens and representative associations the opportunity to make known and publicly exchange their views in all areas of the Union’s action” and adds in the paragraph 2 of the same precept that “the institutions shall maintain an open, transparent and regular dialogue with representative associations and civil society”.

It is hard to know how much the interest groups influence the policy decision as some parts are still hidden, it cannot be known the actual scope of their influence. The increasing attempts by the Commission to organize and regulate interests’ groups activities at the European level in the context of the European Initiative for Transparency show us the trend followed towards transparency of interests group activities by the Union. Despite this, and as has been proven over the years, interests will adapt their strategies and will also develop new ways of approaching the European Union institutions. Somehow, interest groups will try to generate opinions that favour the approval of policies or legislation for the benefit of the groups they work for have been controversial. These laws affect more than 500 million EU citizens, so it did not take long for a debate to emerge about the privileged access of private interests to the highest community leaders and about the transparency -or lack of it- of their actions (Corporate Europe Observatory, 2011). 

Initiatives as the mandatory Transparency Register approved recently by the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the European Union or  the Conference on the future of Europe, show a clear tendency from the institutions to continue in the search of legitimacy form their citizens, either favouring the participation of new interest groups through forums such as the Conference (Bouza and Oleart, 2021), or being totally transparent in the process to be aware of the real influence of other actors in the decision making, as the outcomes will affect all European citizens, and  be able to control it.

Still, it is very important to pursue with the regulation and advocate for an open access and monitor of all the activities to all institutions. The legitimacy problem doesn’t affect much to the European Parliament as democratic representation is found in there. The Commission is the leading institution in the interaction with interest groups, but this relation is not unilateral, and both need each other. Despite the negative image associated with interest group, these proportionate the necessary expertise and legitimacy to European institutions.  The legitimacy can be achieved through a true transparency and equal conditions of accession for both private and public interest groups (Winand, 2011).

Bibliography 

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By The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.