What’s on the table for the NFU Secretariat? A lot as usual, but among other things the NFU Secretariat is currently preparing a draft response to the European Commission consultation on whether to move forward with making EU’s transparency register mandatory and cover more institutions than the Commission.

The transparency register is a tool put in place by the European Parliament and the European Commission to cast light on lobbying activities seeking to influence European policy-making. This public consultation has a twofold objective: to gather views on the functioning of the current Transparency Register and to receive input for the design of the future mandatory regime of registration.

NFU is registered in the EU’s Transparency Register as a lobby organisation and supports both more transparency with regards to lobbying but also concerning accessing information from the EU institutions. Making the Register mandatory is one way forward to increase transparency and to follow lobbying activities in the EU.

NFU finds that it is good to cover all EU institutions, and preferably also EU authorities, in the transparency register. Meaning that if you meet with a politician or a civil servant from an EU institution, this will be registered and made public so that it is easy to follow up on how many meetings different civil servants have with lobbyists representing different interests. This can also be one part of the solution when it comes to the problem with the democratic deficit in the European Union.

Deadline to respond to the consultation is 1 June 2016.