On 23 May EPHA attended the brainstorming session, which discussed the content of the Green Paper on the European Transparency Initiative and in particular the challenges it raises for civil society organizations. This was also an opportunity to discuss queries on the Transparency Initiative.
To begin there was an introduction by Anne-Sophie Parent of the Civil Society Contact Group (CSCG) and Jorgo Riss of The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation at the EU (ALTER-EU) of their respective organisations.
The following short presentations were made
Paul De Clerck, Friends of the Earth - Transparent decision-making: Why it all matters
Elodie Fazi, CSCG - The Green Paper on Transparency: What’s important for NGOs? Elodie outlined the current situation, the voluntary registration system, and the qualities of a Code of Conduct.
Erik Wesselius, ALTER-EU - State of Debate in Brussels and Beyond Erik focused on what is at stake in the debate, especially with regard to Transparency and Ethics Rules.
Debate
A lively debate following the presentations looked at issues such as a good response from coherent civil society; how should lobbying transparency apply to NGOs and what standards do we expect from ourselves? Drafting a common Code of Conduct was also discussed and members were encouraged to develop such a code for their own organisations. Finally, self-regulation and what it really means in practice was debated.
Conclusions
Participants stressed in particular that a strong approach should be taken to lobbying transparency, including strong incentives and disincentives to register in an online database and provide far-reaching information about an organisation’s funding, membership and mandate.
