Lobby Transparency in the EU15 Member States. An Achievement for more trust in politics?

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Seminar paper from the year 2021 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: 1, 7, University of Münster, language: English, abstract: The past scandals of the CDU in Germany have shown: Lobbyism is a serious problem if it operates under the wrong conditions. Even if the cases of Phillipp Amthor and the recent mask affairs of individual CDU/CSU members of parliament can be attributed to corruption, calls have been raised in Germany for mandatory registration. Lobbying has such a bad image in society that industry and associations in Germany have already independently joined forces in an initiative for a lobby register. But does a transparency offensive on the part of politicians lead to increased public trust? This paper aims to precisely answer this question. It is based on the hypothesis that the stricter the regulation, the greater the public's trust in politics. Corporatism is used as the theoretical basis for the investigation necessary to answer this question. Subsequently, the concept of lobbying will be defined and distinguished from corruption. Furthermore, it will be shown how transparency and lobbying are connected and why this can have positive effects on the legislative process. The core of the thesis will be an examination of the Rule of Law Reports of the EU-15. The data on transparency proposals will be compared with survey results of the Eurobarometer to identify possible correlations.