Majority of Brussels lobby firms avoid registry http://euobserver.com/9/29658

Over 60 percent of Brussels-based lobbying consultancies have yet to sign up to the European Commission's lobby register, almost two years after it was first launched.According to a fresh survey of the commission's initiative by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (Alter-EU) to be published on Thursday (11 March), of the 286 lobbying consultancies known to provide such services in the European capital, only 112, or 39.2 percent have signed up to the registry.Frustrated with the various definitions of who is and who is not a lobbyist, Alter-EU restricted themselves to investigating just those firms which are explicitly lobbyist outfits, excluding from their survey trade associations, think tanks, law firms and individuals.

Among their number, which range from big multinational players down to the more boutique-type outfits, are Grayling, the Brunswick Group, Cabinet DN and FD Blueprint.Companies have no shortage of tricks to pursue their clients' interests in the EU capital while avoiding the spotlight. "You can hire a PR firm, which in turn hires a law firm to do the work in Brussels and you stay off the radar," one executive at a leading Brussels-based PR firm said. Erik Wesselius, a spokesman for the pro-transparency NGO - which itself lobbies, but on the issue of lobbying itself - said: "[These] lobby firms active in Brussels do not bother to register and are not transparent about their lobbying activities. "Genuine transparency can only be secured when registration becomes de facto mandatory, by linking physical access to disclosure requirements."