While lobbying can play an important role for democracy, it needs to find its limitations both in legal as well as ethical provisions.

At EU level, we find such provisions mainly in Codes of conduct, a form of soft law. Besides rules on transparency, conflict of interests and the revolving doors phenomenon, these documents refer to ethical principles mainly in an implicit way, by using terms as “integrity”, “diligence”, “honesty”, “accountability” etc.

Those provisions mainly apply for the targets of lobbying, while we find similar, however less, provisions concerning actors of lobbying. Recent changes adopted by Parliament and Council can be seen as important steps towards more ethical lobbying, an important step towards regaining European citizen’s trust.

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Dr. Markus Frischhut, LL.M. is Jean Monnet Professor of “European integration & ethics” (https://jeanmonnet.mci.edu) and Study Coordinator European Union Law at MCI Management Center Innsbruck. At Kingston University London, he is a Visiting Fellow at Kingston University London and external member of the Integrity Research Group (IRG). His research and teaching focus on EU law in general, EU health law, as well as EU law and ethics. In this context, he has published several books and articles and has given numerous speeches, both at international conferences, as well as invited guest speaker of EU institutions (e.g. in 2016 on EU law and ethics in the European Parliament, Strasbourg).