Brussels, May 8 – The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation in the EU (ALTER-EU) welcomes the European Parliament’s approval today of the report on “Framework for the activities of lobbyists in the EU institutions”. The report sends a strong message to the European Commission by calling for a mandatory register, including lobbyists names, their clients or funders and financial disclosure on registered lobbying activities. The Commission is expected to launch its own register in mid-June – but under current proposals this will be purely voluntary, and will not include meaningful financial data or the names of individual lobbyists. “Commissioner Kallas must now act and strengthen the Commission's weak proposals for EU lobbying transparency and ethics rules, as he recently committed to do”, says Erik Wesselius (Corporate Europe Observatory).[1]