The Bar Council is to register its Brussels-based lobbying activities with the European Commission’s European Transparency Initiative (ETI). Established in 2008, the ETI is designed to promote transparency and ethical conduct in the representation of interests to the European Commission and other institutions of the European Union.
Under the ETI the Bar Council will disclose details of its representational activity in Brussels and, through its consultant director, will abide by a code of conduct. The Bar Council maintains a representative office in Brussels in premises which are shared with other European professional bodies representing other bar associations and law societies. The Bar’s Brussels office monitors developments at the EU institutions and makes representations to them regularly on behalf of the Bar of England and Wales and in the public interest. While registration under the ETI register is currently voluntary, the European Commission has made it clear that it expects representative organisations to register and, if they do not, it will treat their representations with the same weight as any individual contribution. The activities of the Bar’s Specialist Bar Associations may also be covered by the ETI and the Bar Council has drawn the attention of those organisations to the desirability of registration.