Following the corruption scandal that was uncovered in the European Parliament in early December, the Flemish Green Party (Groen) want to make lobbying in the Federal Government and Parliament more transparent in Belgium.
The recent corruption scandal in the EU, in which MPs were allegedly bribed by Qatar and Morocco, has sparked plenty of debate on lobbying at the European level. Now, the Flemish Greens stressed that this reflection is not only needed in the EU, but also at the Belgian level.
Therefore, they want to move forward with a bill to introduce a new transparency register this year. Through this system, groups and/or individuals will be required to register if they want to lobby. The party also proposed to add a "transparency paragraph" to every new bill, stating which organisations gave advice during the preparation of the proposal, De Morgen reports.
In 2019, Belgium's Federal Parliament created a similar transparency register for itself, with around 180 lobby groups – ranging from companies to NGOs to professional organisations. However, "that register is an empty shell," federal MP for Groen, Kristof Calvo, said in the Chamber.
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"We want a regulation with sanctions that also applies to the government and cabinets. They are currently excluded, even though that is where most of the power is," he added. In its coalition agreement, the Federal Government already indicated that it intended to "review the lobby register in the lap of the House of Representatives and extend it to government and cabinets."
In its recent Rule of Law Report 2022, the European Commission also asked the Belgian government to work on that promised reform. The report hones in on how an integrity policy for ministers, cabinets and MPs is "lacking and existing codes of conduct continue to have gaps."
It also added that there were "no clear and consistent" rules in place to deal with gifts for Parliament and the Government. Still, there has been little political consensus on Groen's proposal (which was first introduced in 2021) and not much progress on the bill so far.
