This panel brings together scholars to discuss the important issues of integrity, ethics and trust in the EU and its Member States. The Qatargate scandal that shook the EU to its core last December has affected the EU’s reputation and credibility. The EU and its Member States are currently contemplating measures to restore trust and ensure future compliance with ethical standards. But rather than focusing on assessing concrete policy measures, this panel focuses on broader themes of trust, integrity and ethics to understand what will await the EU in the future and what would the improved, 2.0. version of the ethical, trustworthy and legitimate governance look like in the EU and its Member States.

The first paper by Michele Crepaz takes up the issue of trust, yet turning the tables on the familiar topic. Rather than asking whether citizens trust government, police or political parties, he looks at citizens’ attitudes towards interest groups. It is often taken for granted that interest groups and lobbyists are disliked and distrusted by people. However and given the role that interest groups assume in contemporary political processes, it is important to ask whether citizens trust lobbyists and if so, why.

The second paper by Andreea Năstase is also related to trust and the poor reputation of lobbying and lobbyists. It is clear that lobbyists are increasingly effective at shaping public policymaking, yet many feel that they are running wild with no effective mechanisms in place to control them. This exacerbates negative public perceptions over lobbying and its practitioners. Her paper looks at whether the professionalization of lobbying and professional associations would provide one way to reverse this development and restore the perception of lobbying professionals in the eyes of citizens.

The third paper by Lola Avril and Emilia Korkea-aho investigates one development that may explain the low levels of trust people have in the EU. Public sector consulting has become a profitable business in the past years. Consulting has also become an attractive destination to many former politicians and civil servants looking for a new career after their public service job. While these moves are almost universally condemned by media and citizens, the study of former Commissioners’ moves into consultancy business shows that the Commission is embarrassingly reluctant to ensure that it does not itself become a seedbed for new private sector consultants.

Interest groups, such as NGOs, unions and business associations play a key role in contemporary democracies as aggregators and transmission belts of social and economic interests between society and government. Their role as stakeholders in the policymaking process is widely acknowledged in, and beyond the study of politics. However, public opinion research often overlooks the study of citizens’ attitudes towards such political actors, favouring instead to focus on more traditional institutions and organisations, such as government, parliament, and political parties. This paper exploits this empirical gap exploring variation in attitudes such as trust and confidence in interest groups. Public opinion data concerning citizens’ attitudes towards interest groups is scarce and this study offers one of the first insights into this topic. Looking at recent survey rounds of the World Value Survey, this paper explores variation in attitudes towards interest groups in Europe, focusing on potential micro and meso-level determinants of trust. The findings contribute to interest group and public opinion research with a so-far neglected approach in both areas of research.

This paper deals with the professionalization of lobbying in a comparative EU-US perspective, by focusing specifically on the professional associations for lobbyists which operate at the supranational level in Brussels, and at the federal level in Washington D.C. It asks how the establishment and operation of these bodies has been shaped by the distinctive political, institutional and regulatory environments which characterize the European Union and the United States respectively. Comparing Brussels to Washington D.C. is justified because both are democratic pluralist settings with similarly numerous and active interest group populations (Dinan & Wesselius 2010). Using a combination of document analysis and expert interviews, the paper adds to existing research which contrasts interest group politics and lobbying in the EU and the US, but which has so far focused on questions of lobby influence and success, and lobby styles and strategies.

Professionalization is significant because it is intrinsically linked to lobbyists’ power. As ‘professional petitioners’ of government (Holyoke 2017, p. 274), lobbyists are becoming increasingly effective at shaping public policymaking, but also more difficult to oversee and control. This dynamic is highly detrimental to the legitimacy of democratic political institutions and exacerbates negative public perceptions over lobbying and its practitioners. Professional associations play a major role in addressing this challenge, as such bodies not only shape the process of professionalization by defining the knowledge and skills expected from a professional lobbyist, but also directly constrain the power of increasingly specialized practitioners through norm-development and self-regulation.

Recent cases of Commissioners moving to consultancy firms have been strongly criticised by civil society organisations and widely reported in the media. Moreover, since last year’s revelations about the Uber files or Qatargate, the debate about the relationship between EU institutions and external actors has intensified.

The public/private transfers of the highest political figures in the European Commission have been monitored since 2003 by a body called the Independent Ethical Committee. This little-known body offers advice on the compatibility of Commissioners’ post-mandate moves with EU treaties. While the Commission is the decision-maker, it is required to ask the Committee’s opinion in situations where the new occupation is related to the portfolio of the former Commission member.

Our paper reviews the Committee’s views on former Commissioners who seek a position in a consultancy firm or have plans to set up their own firm looking at three cases in particular: Günther Oettinger (2020), Violeta Bulc (2021), and Phil Hogan (2021). Building on a socio-legal analysis of the Committee opinions, as well as interviews with EU officials and members of the Committee, we argue that these three cases all raise significant conflicts of interest and are indicative of the weakness of the Committee’s powers. Moreover, the Commission appears to be embarrassingly reluctant to ensure that it does not itself become a seedbed for new private sector consultants. The cases also contribute to the definition of the contours of lobbying activities and acceptable practices in terms of public/private transitions within the European politico-administrative field.