Enlighten me please, as I don't believe the reasons for passing it are genuine.

I'm way oversimplifying this, but I'm going to enlighten you by saying that this isn't a part of law yet. It merely passed a checkpoint called legal committee (that consists of 25 MEPs) on its way to become a part of law.

There are still multiple checkpoints that can be used to counter this, and the proposal will almost certainly be voted on by the entire EP, probably in December/January.

That's why calling your representative makes a difference.

Lobbyists don't usually hand over money. Usually they are just good at appearing trustworthy and, uh, explaining the positions of their clients in terms that politicians understand.

Therefore, their explainees think they are doing genuinely good things.

By the way, I saw a honest-to-god lobbyist at a panel discusssion once. He was wearing a sort of relaxed suit and had a slight punk vibe with slightly messy hair. The personality-free banker look wouldn't win trust so easily when speaking for business interests. Those people really know what they are doing.

Surely they don't hand over cash, I didn't mean that, but they give benefits by different means.

The main benefit they give is to explain technical concepts in terms the politicians understand.

Sometimes that's a "benefit", but that's when calling them yourself helps the most.

That benefit could also be a card to anonymous account in tax haven.

Well, they have in the past:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_cash_for_influence_scanda...