Lobbying

Molly believes that her primary responsibility is to represent her constituents and so she is likely to have less time for meeting lobbyists than some other MEPs.

At present lobbyists are all considered equivalent, so that somebody paid to ensure that the financial services sector faces less pressure to operate for the common good is treated the same way as a representative from a membership organisation focused on improving the environment for everybody. Molly has chosen to meet the second kind of lobbyist more than the first.

The Green/EFA group is committed to lobbying transparency and is the first political group in the European Parliament to automatically publish information about meetings held with lobbyists and interest representatives such as civil society organisations.

The Green/EFA group have developed LobbyCal, a new open-source tool, which takes information from MEPs’ calendars, and publishes the information on their websites the day after the lobby meeting takes place. This allows all citizens to see who Green MEPs are meeting, when they are meeting them, and what is talked about with outside stakeholders. This was one of the promises made by many of our MEPs before the European elections.

Further information on lobbying transparency.