The Government has approved the germ of the future lobbying law, a regulation to which Spain is late in the European context and that of Western countries and which seeks to regulate relations and meetings between politicians, whether they are rulers or legislators, and economic powers. The council of ministers has given the green light this Tuesday, in this way, to the draft law on transparency and integrity in the activities of interest groups, an initiative that the sector has not liked because it excludes employers, unions and political parties.
Legislating on the connections between politics and the economy is a recurrent demand of the community authorities. The Council of Europe and the Group of States against Corruption (Greco) have stated on several occasions that one of the great legal gaps in Spain is the absence of this regulation that affects pressure groups. The historical recommendation is to provide transparency and regulation to an activity that grows in Spain year after year.
In the aforementioned preliminary draft law issued by the Government, it can be read that the interest groups will be those "individuals and legal entities, whatever their form or legal status, as well as groups of people who form platforms, forums, networks social or other forms of collective activity, without legal personality, who work on their own or for someone else and regardless of their form or legal status, who carry out influence activities”. The problem comes when listing the exceptions.
It is the most controversial point. The Executive excludes from consideration of interest groups "political parties, unions and business associations in the exercise of their constitutional functions, without prejudice to the fact that entities created or financed by them may be considered interest groups." ”, according to the documentation to which La Vanguardia has had access.
In other words, if CEOE meets with the Government or with the parliamentary groups of the Congress and Senate to negotiate certain amendments to a law, as usual, the actors will not have the obligation to make those contacts known. Precisely, this is one of the main activities of the employers' organizations, which have a specific area of relations with the Courts specialized in direct contact with parliamentarians. The regional employer associations, such as Foment del Treball, and the sectoral ones, such as Aelec, the electricity company, Seopan, for construction, or the AEB, for banking, are also excluded from being considered a lobby.
The Government's decision has not been liked, as we say, in the sector. Business sources indicate that the exclusion of employers places them at a competitive disadvantage. They also question whether Spain complies with El Greco's recommendations. In the European Parliament it is mandatory to register all activity related to political groups. The CEOE, in fact, does. The same is also happening in the United States, a paradigmatic country when it comes to lobbying. The Government's legal proposal can still be modified during parliamentary processing.
The draft law determines that lobbying activity is "all direct or indirect communication with public personnel" that is carried out "with the purpose of intervening in public decision-making or in the processes of designing and applying public policies and elaboration of normative projects, developed on behalf of an entity or organized group of a private or non-governmental nature, for the benefit of its own interests or the interests of third parties, regardless of the place in which it is carried out and the channel or medium used. .
In order to record these meetings between the public and private sectors, the “registry of interest groups of the General State Administration and its public sector” is created. The data of the lobbyists in Spain will be published in the transparency portal and will depend on the office of conflicts of interest.
The activities carried out by the interest groups with the purpose of influencing the elaboration and adoption of any normative project will be reflected by the competent ministry in the memory of the normative impact analysis of the laws. This document will contain the identity of the public personnel who have had contact with said pressure groups.
