Lobbying & Respect

I went to an evening discussion on lobbying. Much of the discussion was around how transparent are the EU institutions, whether there is balance between industry and NGO lobbying and under what conditions and rules should people be given access. There wasn't though much discussion about the actual benefits of the EU dialoguing with lots of different interests and the need for relationships of trust and respect.

The need for evidence made EU policy-making that is made in a transparent, accountable and multi-stakeholder manner becomes ever more important in the equation of trust of citizens in policy-making as we stand in the long shadow of the Brexit vote. If companies and sectors are to argue for better regulation being 'more from less regulation' then powerful alternative forms of regulation such as self-regulation must provide compelling evidence that it applies to the key players, is the indicator of professional diligence, has good means to ensure compliance including effective sanctions and that the results are transparent and match not only the design but the expectations established at the beginning. This means that more attention to quantifying the impact of compliance for a sector, the significance of being 'named and shamed' and how the rules are being regularly reviewed to remain actual with the participation in some form or another with multi-stakeholders will be needed. having hard evidence to hand will mean that proper REFIT and impact assessment processes will need to respect these inputs which brings me around to why its so important that the EU institutions uses the data it has on lobbying and representational interests in the transparency register is used to ensure that there really are multi-stakeholder discussions rather than siloed opaque dialogues where the outcome may seem predetermined. this way there will be better trust as well of the multi-stakeholders in a new form of governance.