Lobbyleaks: Portal to report shady lobbying

LobbyControl and Corporate Europe Observatory have founded the online portal Lobbyleaks. MEPs and their employees can use the website to report questionable lobbying activities by big tech companies anonymously and in encrypted form.

In a cross-party coalition of EU parliamentarians, the civil society organizations LobbyControl and Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) created a contact point last week to uncover covert lobbying by big tech corporations. At lobbyleaks.eu, members of parliament and their employees can give the lobby guards anonymous and encrypted information about lobbying activities, after which they can be examined more closely.

The idea for the platform came from the social democrats Paul Tang, René Repasi and Christel Schaldemose. Last fall, they accused big US tech companies like Google, Meta and Amazon of deceiving lawmakers in deliberations on new rules for online platforms by lobbying through smaller front groups.

The LobbyControl portal is now to be used as an early warning system for attempts to influence the current framework, which is based on the EU transparency register. In addition, the incoming information should also flow into research in order to track down new shady lobbying tactics. The data obtained in this way could also serve as a basis for complaints to the secretariat of the EU Transparency Register.

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