The European Ombudsman closed his enquiry today into BusinessEurope’s unrealistically low lobby budget in the Commission’s transparency register, after achieving a friendly solution. As requested by the Ombudsman, the European Commission has agreed to inform Friends of the Earth Europe about its review of BusinessEurope’s registration, and make its procedures for investigating complaints public.
This campaign success comes more than a year after Friends of the Earth Europe initially filed a complaint to the European Ombudsman, in December 2009, for maladministration. The complaint was filed in reaction to the European Commission’s failure to tackle the unrealistically low registration of professional lobby association BusinessEurope in the register of Interest representatives.