Coen, David; Katsaitis, Alexander; (2025) Ethics, Integrity, and Lobbying: Why & How to Modernize Government Affairs Regulation in the European Union. In: Alemanno, Alberto, (ed.) The Law and Governance of the EU Public Ethics System: An Institutional Perspective. (pp. 201-221). Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, Switzerland.

Text Coen_Coen and Katsaitis_2025 Regulating EU Gov Affairs - Palgrave book chapter.pdf Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 24 April 2026. Download (403kB)

Abstract

Lobbying in the EU has increased dramatically over the past 30 years, with unprecedented resources allocated to government affairs. This generates concerns about the EU’s capacity to withstand lobbying influence, and points to potential problems with its democratic legitimacy. How can EU regulations be brought up to speed to address twenty-first-century lobbying practices? How can we improve EU ethics and integrity when it comes to lobbying regulations? In this chapter we take a two-step approach. In the first part, we develop a conceptual framework that considers EU lobbying regulations and their limitations. We focus on three core areas that would benefit from further work: (i) regulatory consolidation; (ii) system interoperability; and (iii) open-access implementation. Future regulations developed along these lines can help policy to leap-frog ahead of interest groups. In the second part, using this framework, we construct a battery of measures to compare the EU’s main lobbying regulatory tool, the Joint Transparency Register (JTR), with other interest group registries around the world. We provide a comparative that allows us to understand how the EU’s register compares with other similar systems and allows us to develop an analysis that is relevant for policy development while contributing to future research.

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