High Number Of EU Politicians Now Lobbyists: Watchdog

BRUSSELS, , (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 31st Jan, 2017 ) : A leading transparency watchdog on Tuesday urged the EU to crack down on the "revolving door" of former officials joining lobbying groups.

More than half of the people on the last European Commission and nearly a third in the previous European Parliament have joined EU lobbies, Transparency International said. Cases of former politicians moving into private sector jobs extended well beyond the high-profile incident of former commission president Jose Manuel Barroso joining the board of the US investment bank Goldman Sachs.

"We need rules that prevent conflicts of interest or the capture of the institutions by lobbyists," Daniel Freund of Transparency International EU said in a statement. The group said it had carried out the first full analysis of such moves, which showed that 50 percent of ex-Commissioners and 30 percent of former MEPs were now working for organisations on the EU lobby register.

In one case, 57 percent of the accredited lobbyists for the US hi-tech giant Google had previously worked for EU institutions.