The ALTER-EU coalition

  • The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) is a coalition of over 160 civil society groups, trade unions, academics and public affairs firms concerned with the increasing influence exerted by corporate lobbyists on the political agenda in Europe, the resulting loss of democracy in EU decision-making and the postponement, weakening, or blockage even, of urgently needed progress on social, environmental and consumer-protection reforms.

  • ALTER-EU was born out of the need to provide a cohesive and consolidated approach to campaigning in Europe on curbing the influence of corporations on EU decision-making and formalised as a coalition in July 2005 in response to the “European Transparency Initiative” (ETI) launched under the European Commission Vice President, Siim Kallas, that same year.

    The issue of lobbying has been central to the ETI debate from the very beginning. In his speech at the launch of the ETI in Nottingham in 2005, Commissioner Kallas himself commented that: “Lobbyists can have considerable influence on legislation, in particular on proposals of a technical nature... But their transparency is too deficient in comparison to the impact of their activities.”

    The objective of the ALTER-EU’s campaign work has been, therefore, to ensure that comprehensive and mandatory rules on lobbying transparency and ethics become the tangible result of the ETI process.

    ALTER-EU advocates rules that make transparency (including about sources of income) an obligation for all EU lobbyists. In the meanwhile, we have no hesitations about disclosing this information ourselves.