How to

On LobbyFacts’ homepage search for the company’s name; on its specific data card, each triangle on the timeline represents a revised entry to the lobby register, with the red triangle on the right, the most recent. By clicking on a triangle, you can see all the data that was registered at that time. You can use this facility to compare how that registrant has changed its lobby spending, numbers of Parliament access passes, lobby issues, or other data over time. LobbyFacts includes all data from the EU lobby register since 17 February 2012. Some organisations update their registrations several times in one year. This can be because significant changes have occurred (as good practice, ALTER-EU recommends that updates are made at least twice a year), or to rectify mistakes. Mistakes are common in the register, and for some entries, registered lobby spend fluctuates massively between updates.

On the Statistics page, you can search for all lobby register entries (or those of companies, NGOs etc, or those from a specific country) on any given date since 17 February 2012. For example, you could apply the date of 1 January 2012 and then compare the resulting list with a search based on the same day in 2016.

LobbyFacts uses data from the official EU lobby register and unfortunately the data in the register is not reliable enough to provide total figures for the amount spent on lobbying or the total number of lobbyists active in Brussels.

For example, if you look at the Statistics page, and sort entries by spending, you will see some huge declared spends from registrants that you have never heard of, indicating that they have either mistakenly declared their turnover (not lobby spend) or made a mistake inputting the figures. Additionally, other organisations may well be under-estimating their lobby spend (to try to appear less active than they really are). There is also an issue with double-counting in that both those who employ intermediaries (law firms or lobby consultancies) to carry out their lobbying, and the intermediaries themselves, should declare that lobby spend.

For the total number of lobbyists, the figures in the EU lobby register are also too unreliable for LobbyFacts to produce a total. The figures for total number of lobbyists (which relates to numbers of individuals lobbying) and the total number of fulltime equivalent (FTE) lobbyists, are both self-declared figures which means that they are also subject to over- or under-reporting. For example, if you add up the the total number of FTE lobbyists declared, you will reach a figure of about 45,000. But this is not robust: the top 20 biggest lobbyist declarers alone report that they have 14,000+ lobbyists between them, which is clearly ludicrous. Too many organisations mistakenly declare their total staff numbers or total membership numbers, instead of their total lobbyist numbers. Meanwhile, the number of European Parliament passholders is a reliable figure (it is not self-declared, but instead comes direct from the Parliament's records) and reveals that there are over 6000 passholders. But this is not an accurate indicator of total lobbyist numbers, only of how many EP lobby passes have been issued. Many other lobbyists are active in Brussels, including around the Commission, but without holding an access pass. Therefore, EP passes also do not reflect total lobbyist numbers.

These are some of the reasons why LobbyFacts does not provide any figures for either total spend on EU lobbying, or for total lobbyist numbers. Notwithstanding this, if you perform a search on the Statistics page, click to download the search into a file, you can calculate the declared lobby spend total or the total declared lobbyist numbers for that particular dataset.

These are all indicators of being significant EU lobbyists and choosing ‘Yes’ for one or more of these boxes on the Statistics page when you perform a search can help you to come up with a list of the most significant EU lobbyists. This is especially helpful as the register is littered with wrong entries. Too many organisations register their total budget and total staff when they should instead register their lobby spend and number of lobbyists. This means that some entries are inflated and some totally unknown organisations are at the top of the ranking of the organisations with the biggest lobby spend or most lobbyists. Alternatively, some major organisations under-declare their lobby spend or their lobbyist numbers, in order to appear that they carry out less lobbying than they really do. The filters, while not perfect, are short-cuts to generate more accurate rankings. But care must be taken. There are some major lobbyists which do not have an office in Brussels or which may prioritise meetings with the Parliament and not the Commission, or vice versa. If you prefer to not use these filters, make sure the ‘Either’ options are selected.

When you have performed a search for certain data on the Statistics page, click the ‘Download’ button and you will get the opportunity to save a spreadsheet of your data.

These categories are those used by the official EU lobby transparency register. Organisations choose which category they think they best fit into and there are some common errors: too many register as professional consultancies (a category which is supposed to only refer to lobby consultancies) and too many organisations choose to present themselves as NGOs or think tanks, when they might be best described as trade associations, promoting corporate agendas. More information on how the register describes the specific categories can be found on page 8 of the official guidance.

The ‘EP passes’ figure is an official figure direct from the European Parliament’s records which provides information on the number of accredited European Parliament passholders. The ‘Lobbyists FTE’ figure is automatically calculated by the register according to data provided by the registrants themselves. The ‘EP passes’ figure is an accurate reflection of all lobbyists with EP passes but may not reflect all the lobbyists an organisation actually has. But the ‘Lobbyists FTE’ figure is self-declared, so also may not provide a full picture. Too many organisations under-declare their lobbyist numbers, or over-declare, by providing a total number of their staff or members.

Furthermore, on the individual data cards, in the left hand column under ‘Lobbyists declared’, two figures are given. The first is the full-time equivalent number of lobbyists; the second figure (given in brackets) is the total number of lobbyists declared, even if some of them do not work full time on lobbying. LobbyFacts considers that the FTE figure is more reliable than the total lobbyists figure.

On the Statistics page you can search for registrants from any country, including any of the 28 EU member states. The generated list is based on information provided to the register about the location of the head office of registrants. Of course, you can also perform a search, and then sort the selected data according to ‘Head office in’ on the Statistics page.

The LobbyFacts search function allows you to use it to find individual organisations or particular issues such as TTIP. If you wish to find the datacard for BusinessEurope, if you start to type the name into the search box, you can click on the 'BusinessEurope' link and it will take you straight to the datacard for that organisation. Pressing return will instead take you to a wider list of search results. For the most effective searches:

• Make sure your search term is correctly spelled
• Watch out for unexpected issues in organisation names eg. it is ExxonMobil and not Exxon Mobil; also, it is JPMorgan and not JP Morgan

LobbyFacts is only as good as the data on the official register and there is no consistency in how lobby issues are recorded. For example, some lobby register entries may refer to ‘TTIP’; some may write the ‘EU-US trade deal’; and others may write the ‘Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership’. Others may just make vague references to ‘trade’.

Please note that the LobbyFacts search function does not search the Commission’s meetings data.

Since 1 December 2014, the European Commission has published online all meetings that commissioners, their cabinet members, and the directors-general have had with organisations in the register. The data on LobbyFacts is extracted from those Commission webpages (and LobbyFacts then matches reported lobbyists with data from the official EU lobby register). LobbyFacts includes all published meetings since 1 December 2014. The meetings data is available on the Statistics page, while the individual data card for each registrant also provides a full list of its meetings held.

There are a few important things to note: a registrant may well have had other lobby meetings with lower-level officials in the Commission, but the only published data covers elite officials only. Secondly, the data that the Commission publishes is not perfect: there are duplications, omissions, and delays. For example, a meeting attended by two separate officials can be reported twice, even though only one meeting was actually held, which can distort the figures. Nonetheless, in the view of LobbyFacts, whether or not a registrant has met with the elite of the Commission, is one good indicator of lobby influence in Brussels. LobbyFacts will ensure that the meetings data we publish is updated at least once every week.

According to the LobbyFacts database, over 400 organisations have registered on the official EU lobby transparency register and then, at a later date, re-registered (and sometime re-registered a second time!) under different identification numbers once previous registrations had lapsed. The lobby register secretariat is not vigilant at requiring lapsed organisations to re-register under the original identification number; nor does it prevent organisations from unintentionally registering twice; which means that a search on LobbyFacts will find each and all of the registrations for a given organisation. Putting them together will give you an overall picture of a particular organisation’s history in (and out) of the EU lobby register.