The lucrative business of lobbying is set to become more transparent in Brussels after a European court ruled that privacy laws could not be used to keep lobbyists’ names secret.

The European Court of First Instance ruled today that the European Commission was wrong to refuse to identify the attendees of a crucial meeting about competition in the beer industry.

The Commission claimed that identifying the attendees would have been a breach of their privacy.

But this morning the court said that the Commission could only refuse in limited circumstances in which the information at stake was “personal data that are capable of actually and specifically undermining the protection of privacy and the integrity of the individual”.

The court added that just because a lobbyist attends a meeting with the Commission as a representative of a collective group, it does not give them an automatic right to privacy.

Such a meeting — thousands of which take place with various European institutions every year — does not fall “within the sphere of [the lobbyist’s] private life” and therefore revealing attendees names “cannot constitute an interference with his private life”.

The case centred on a 1996 meeting between representatives of the beer industry and European officials. Shortly after the meeting, the Commission abandoned an investigation into whether a UK law limiting the sale of certain beers was illegal.

Andrew Ronnan, founder of the Bavarian Lager Company, an importer that claims to have lost out because of these rules, has been fighting to find out who attended the meeting ever since.

The Commission supplied Mr Ronnan with the minutes but erased the names of five individuals.

Mr Ronnan, who said he was “delighted” with today’s decision, believes the Commission will now have to identify the five people.

He told Times Online that if, as he suspects, these individuals were representatives of businesses that profited from the investigation being dropped, he would be asking his lawyers to explore a compensation claim.

Shearman & Sterling, Bavarian Lager’s lawyers, said the ruling would have wider implications for the lobbying industry.

A spokesperson said: "Those seeking to influence the Commission must now understand, more than ever, that their identity and lobbying activities may be made public by the Commission, notwithstanding the data protection rules."

Corporate Europe Observatory, a group campaigning for greater transparency in the lobbying process, welcomed the decision.

"The judgment means that the Commission will no longer be able to justify withholding names of individual lobbyists who communicate opinions or information to it by referring to EU data privacy protection rules," it said.

The Commission has already published proposals for a voluntary register of lobbyists that would identify the size — and source — of their fees. But some lobbyists have said they would not sign up to the scheme because of confidentiality issues.

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