A few days ago, an NGO representative expressed her concerns about the way the European Parliament was dealing with the European Commission’s proposal for a revised inter-institutional agreement on a “mandatory transparency register”.

The proposal was submitted by the EU commission on 28 September 2016 and aimed at including the Council of the EU, where representatives of member states sit, as a new partner within the framework.

Following the commission’s proposal, the EU parliament’s Conference of Presidents entrusted us, as the responsible lead negotiators – supported by a contact group composed of one MEP from each political group – with developing a draft negotiating mandate.

We organised five contact group meetings, where detailed discussions provided the opportunity for all political groups to give their input and ideas. It led to the endorsement of a balanced text on 11 April this year.

We enriched our deliberations by means of a half-day meeting between the contact group and the involved NGO representatives – including Nina Katzemich from the website LobbyControl, and others from organisations such as Transparency International, Civil Society Europe and Corporate Europe Observatory.

We listened carefully to their concerns, many of which we had already incorporated into our work, such as the necessity to enlarge the definition of lobbying and to include an independent observer in the management structure of the transparency register.

We also discussed how we to pursue the negotiations with the EU commission and the council in order to get those concerns taken on board.