There are 10 Member States without Lobbying Rules: Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal and Slovakia.

BELGIUM

Specific legislation on lobbying: No statutory rules

Code of conduct for lobbyists: No

A register for lobbyists: No

There are 8 Member States that have self-regulation mechanisms of lobbying: Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Romania, Spain and Sweden. These were set up by the public affairs communities to promote the transparency of lobbying.

CROATIA

Specific legislation on lobbying: No statutory rules

Code of conduct for lobbyists: The members of the Croatian Society of Lobbyists sign the Code of Conduct upon registration. Registration requires an annual fee of 200 Euro.

There are currently six Member States with statutory rules on lobbying (mandatory regulation): Austria, Ireland, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom + Catalonia and Scotland.  

Mandatory Regulation

AUSTRIA

In the lobbying field, ethics includes values such as honesty, openness, loyalty, fair-mindedness, respect, integrity, and forthright communication. The current state of ethics in the lobbying practice depends heavily on codes of conduct held by the major professional associations. Membership in these groups is voluntary, meaning that one is not required to belong to such an association in order to practice lobbying. Members agree to abide by a code code of conduct that is written for the entire group.

Codes of conduct are common in many professions and occupations. Codes of conduct provide guidance to individuals on responsible and ethical professional practices. They define rules of behaviour based on core principles and ethical standards for members of the profession or occupation. They increase peer pressure on professionals to comply with certain generally accepted standards. They can also enhance the reputations of individuals by publicizing the principles for which they stand, and provide a means of evaluating the ethics of individuals who practise in the profession.

As the number of ethics rules and standards increase, holders of public office must be made aware of the rules adopted. While adopting new rules and standards is a key element to any successful ethics regime, holders of public office also need to be educated with regard to those rules. Training is an important instrument in any strategy to increase awareness of the existence of rules and standards. However, ‘one-stop training’ is not enough either. The effective implementation of a conflicts of interest policy requires the ongoing education of all holders of public office.

Source: OECD

Serving the Public Interest

The implicit understanding of politics is that the “special interests” and their lobbyists “buy” politicians.The problem with this view is not only that is it wrong, but also that it misdirects citizens. In short, it asks citizens to analyze politics without the actual politics –without the competition between competing interests, without the shifting alliances and coalitions, without parties and ideology, without any sense of there being a policy process, and without the many unpredictabilities and uncertainties that make politics actually interesting.

Source: Transparency International (2015)

Strengths of lobbying safeguards against undue influence and rules to promote ethical lobbying in European political systems based on a Scale 0-100, where 0 is the weakest and 100 is the strongest. Results are presented in descending order with highest scoring country. The overall score is an un-weighted average of results in three categories: transparency, integrity and equality of access.

1. Slovenia: 55

2. Lithuania: 50

3. United Kingdom: 44

4. Austria: 40

5. Lithuania, Ireland: 39

1. Agenda Setting