Since the beginning of the term, almost half of Lithuania’s members of the European Parliament (EP) (5 out of 11) have announced at least one meeting with lobbyists and interest groups. Lithuania’s representatives have scored 20th place out of 27 among the share of MEPs who publish their meetings. At least one such meeting was disclosed by every second member of the European Parliament (412 out of 705), according to a review conducted by Transparency International EU (TI EU).
Over the past three years, Lithuanian MEPs have published a total of 47 meetings – Rasa Juknevičienė published 20 meetings, Juozas Olekas – 13, Andrius Kubilius – 8, Stasys Jakeliūnas – 4, Petras Auštrevičius – 2. They mostly met with representatives of various businesses and business associations.
MEPs from Hungary (48%), Bulgaria (47%), Estonia (43%) and Italy (42%) have published a similar share of meetings to the representatives of Lithuania (45%).
All MEPs from Luxembourg (100%) and most of the representatives from Sweden (95%), Denmark (93%), Finland (93%) and the Netherlands (90%) publish their meetings.
The meetings were most actively published by members of the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance (112 meetings on average) and the Renew Europe Group (61 meetings on average).
In 2019, at the beginning of this term, the European Parliament introduced new rules requiring committee chairs, rapporteurs and shadow rapporteurs to publish meetings with lobbyists and interest groups on the EP website. The new rules also encourage all MEPs to voluntarily make their meetings public.
The review provides information on meetings of EP representatives with interest groups from the beginning of the term until July 1, 2022. It was collected directly from the individual accounts of MEPs on the EP page and was relevant on September 12, 2022. All the information on more than 28 thousand meetings, published by 412 members of the European Parliament, is published on the regularly updated website EU Integrity Watch.
For more information, please contact Ieva Dunčikaitė, iduncikaite@transparency.lt, +370 5 212 69 51.
For methodological questions, please contact Transparency International EU: EUPress@transparency.org, +32 2 893 24 58.