European Parliament

The European Parliament has this week adopted the new Staff Regulations. CEO welcomes the steps in the right direction, to help curb conflicts of interest that arise through revolving door between public officials and corporate lobbyists. These include a cooling-off period on certain lobby jobs for senior officials, as well as transparency around these cases. But ending the privileged access and undue influence that the revolving door gives to big business and their lobby groups will require more.

After months and months of delay on the review of the rules that govern EU insitution staff – the Staff Regulations – the Commission, Parliament and Council are now finalising the process known as trialogues, where they hash out agreement on the contentious issues and the finer details. It is in these final stages that, amongst the difficult issues of staff pay cuts and working hours, the importance of ensuring robust and far-reaching rules to govern conflicts of interest that arise through the revolving-door must be remembered.

At the end of June, the European Union and the US will officially launch negotiations for a new free trade agreement known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The plan is to create the world's largest free trade area, 'protect' investment and harmonize regulation. While appealing to big business, the trade treaty poses a serious threat for citizens on both sides of the Atlantic, as it could weaken labour, social, environmental and consumer protection standards.

While leaving most issues unclear, the Commission’s response to Parliamentary questions about Dalligate has revealed some disturbing new facts. Behind closed doors meetings with tobacco lobbyists are facilitated by the revolving door – when former public officials become lobbyists, often in the same policy areas.

Last week the Commission and OLAF responded to 154 questions on Dalligate tabled by MEPs. Instead of clarifying the basic facts about the Dalli lobby scandal, the Commission and OLAF left most key questions unanswered. The smoke is far from being cleared, and more pressure for real answers, and for stronger lobby rules, is urgently needed.

It is now 16 months since the cash-for-influence scandal rocked the European Parliament and led to the resignation of two MEPs (Ernest Strasser and Zoran Thaler). A third MEP, Adrian Severin of Romania was sacked by the Socialist group but refused to resign from the Parliament. After the scandal, MEPs developed a new Code of Conduct aimed at preventing this from happening again, but it only came in on 1 January 2012 and cannot be applied retrospectively. So what happened next to Severin?

“The new code of conduct will be a strong shield against unethical behaviour.”