Lobbying

In recent decades, civil society organisations (CSOs) have grown both in number and in their impact on policy-making, at European and also non-Member state level. Public institutions, motivated by the need to increase their legitimacy, have increasingly delegated functions to CSOs. Concomitantly, CSOs have expanded their access to public funding. In part because of increased access to public funding, and in part because of a stronger relationship with public powers, CSOs are under pressure to demonstrate that they use the resources they are given in an efficient, accountable and transparent manner, e.g. by adopting policies on fiscal transparency, and by maintaining financial solvency. The EU's interest in regulating CSOs is relatively recent. At present, the legal framework addressing CSOs' financial accountability includes two 'categories' of norms: those that regulate the award of public contracts and the concession of grants, and those norms that address transparency and openness. The first category includes the rules on public contracts and the rules on (co-)financing of CSO projects; whereas the second category includes the Financial Transparency Initiative (FTJ) and the Joint Transparency Register
(JTR). The FTJ gathers all information on EU funding in a single database. The JTR gathers information produced by the various organisations (including CSOs) that are interested in lobbying the EU, and who register voluntarily. Defining the boundaries of CSO fiscal accountability and effectively tackling cases of fraud or financial mismanagement remains a difficult endeavor. On the one hand, the EU still lacks a single overarching understanding (and, consequently, legal definition) of CSOs. This translates into the absence of clear legal definitions, and more generally into
the opacity of the information available on CSOs through EU databases. Moreover, as CSOs are 'private entities', they are not submitted to the same integrity mechanisms and norms that apply to public institutions, including internal and external oversight. Finally, a significant administrative burden imposed on CSOs may, in the end, counter EU efforts to tackle financial mismanagement by CSOs. In many respects, the issue of CSO financial accountability has come to resemble a dialogue of the deaf: EU institution-proposed reforms have been postponed, or have not produced the outcomes expected, or have been fiercely opposed by CSOs. At the same time, the self-regulatory tools (including policies on selecting donors, self monitoring and codes of conduct and standards) developed by CSOs to enhance their
financial accountability have not obtained official recognition from EU institutions.

In the aftermath of Eurozone crisis many politicians, scholars and EU leaders openly called for enhanced institutional reform and further EU integration in order to solve outstanding problems of the union. In that light the EU created the Europe 2020 Strategy with an aim to deliver smart and sustainable growths. The EU’s Digital Agenda for Europe is a flagship initiative of Europe 2020 strategy and it defines 7 priority areas as obstacles which will be tackled by the action plan in order to create unified digital Europe. One of the 7 priority areas is Digital Single Market (DSM) which aims to update the European Single Market for the digital era.
This thesis aims to examine how does the EU’s Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE) advance EU integration.  Connectedly, it examines the effect of DAE on European integration based on the neofunctionalist theoretical framework. Accordingly, major focus of this thesis is devoted to investigation, conceptualization and operationalization, of multiple spill-over effects, namely: functional, institutional and political spill-over as core integrative mechanism behind the EU integration. In order to achieve the purpose of the thesis and examine the integrative mechanism behind the DAE this thesis utilizes theory testing process-tracing as main methodological approach. 
The significance of this thesis resides in highlighting the contemporary enhancement of EU integration within a specific sector in the modern, digital environment. Consequently, it emphasizes the functional EU integration in sectoral and vertical dimensions hence also reinvigorating the neofunctionalist theoretical framework of EU integration. Additionally, this thesis presents the defined goals and priorities of DAE which by implementing planned actions aims to significantly change the socio-economic environment of Europe and greatly impact ordinary citizen lives.

Th is book explores the activism promoted by organised networks of civil society actors in opening up possibilities for more democratic supranational governance. It examines the positive and negative impact that such networks of civil society actors – named “interlocutory coalitions” – may have on the convergence of principles of administrative governance across the European legal system and other supranational legal systems.
Th e book takes two main controversial aspects into account: the first relates to the convergence between administrative rules pertaining to different supranational regulatory systems. Traditionally, the spread of methods of administrative governance
has been depicted primarily against the background of the interactions between the domestic and the supranational arena, both from a top-down and bottom-up perspective. However, the exploration of interactions occurring at the supranational
level between legal regimes is still not grounded on adequate empirical evidence.
The second controversial aspect considered in this book consists of the role of civil society actors operating at the supranational level. In its discussion of the first aspect, the book focuses on the relations between the European administrative law and the
administrative principles of law pertaining to other supranational regulatory regimes and regulators, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Asian Development Bank, and the Council of
Europe. The examination of the second aspect involves the exploration of the still little examined, but crucial, role of civil society organised networks in shaping global administrative law. These “interlocutory coalitions” include NGOs, think tanks,
foundations, universities, and occasionally activists with no formal connections to civil society organisations. Th e book describes such interlocutory coalitions as drivers of harmonized principles of participatory democracy at the European and global levels.
However, interlocutory coalitions show a number of tensions (e.g. the governability of coalitions, the competition among them) that may hamper the impact they have on the reconfi guration of individuals’ rights, entitlements and responsibilities in the global arena.

This chapter provides a policy-based reading of the drivers, processes, and long-term ramifications of the outsourcing of military support services that has thus far been all but absent from the literature. Military support services represent the vast majority of contracts let by the military, so that the findings arrived at here are seen to be representative for the broader issue of military contractorisation. Focusing on the USA and the UK, the chapter will 1) identify the structural, contextual factors that frame defence services acquisition, 2) map the defence services acquisition “policy network”, and 3) identify a systemic bias towards contractorisation. Based on these findings, the chapter will 4) conclude with an outlook over the future of military contractorisation within the political context identified earlier.

Alors que 2010 marque l’année internationale de la biodiversité, les firmes jouent un rôle encore mal connu dans l’élaboration des accords internationaux liés à ce thème. Pour le préciser, cet ouvrage analyse l’influence des lobbies industriels sur les négociations passées et en cours de deux sous-accords de la Convention sur la diversité biologique signée en 1992 dans le cadre des Nations unies. Ces deux sous-accords portent respectivement sur la gestion des biotechnologies, et sur celle des ressources génétiques naturelles. Les firmes ont-elles réussi à imposer leurs préférences lors des négociations de ces accords ? Ont-elles dicté leurs lois, ou, au contraire, sont-elles restées sous le joug des gouvernements ? Seule une analyse empirique détaillée des stratégies d’influence industrielles en amont et pendant les réunions de négociations internationales permet de répondre à ces interrogations. « Une réponse à plusieurs paradoxes du régime de la biodiversité. A ma connaissance, aucune étude ne permet de mieux comprendre le fossé qui sépare la Suisse des Etats-Unis sur le dossier APA, alors que tous deux sont des foyers importants de compagnies biotechnologiques. Cet ouvrage éclaire l’ambivalence du gouvernement américain, suffisamment sceptique pour s’abstenir de soumettre la ratification de la CDB au Congrès, et suffisamment enthousiaste pour défendre à grands cris l’approche contractuelle de la CDB par opposition à une approche réglementaire » Jean-Frédéric Morin, professeur à l’Université libre de Bruxelles. « L’auteur montre bien les limites de l’influence des entreprises au niveau national et international. Ses conclusions sur les nuances à apporter quant au rôle et au pouvoir des firmes sont extrêmement bien étayées et convaincantes » Philippe Le Prestre, professeur à l’Université Laval et directeur de l’Institut Hydro-Québec en environnement, développement et société.

Planung und Evaluation im Public-Affairs-Management (PA) erfordern eine strategische Vorstellung von Ziel-Mittel-Relationen sowie Verlaufs- und Ergebnisinformationen über Veränderungen. Der Beitrag gibt in drei Teilen einen Überblick über Probleme und Lösungsideen dieser Aufgabe, die weniger der schematischen Kontrolle als der Strategiekompetenz und Lernkultur dienen sollte. Der erste Abschnitt umreißt die Ambivalenzen und Grenzen der PA-Metrie und legt dar, wie Werttreiber und Wirkungsmodelle einen Planungs- und Evaluationsrahmen für einzelne Messkonzepte bilden. Die zwei folgenden Abschnitte erläutern praktische Anwendungen: Bewertungstechniken für dauerhafte Verbandsmitgliedschaften von Unternehmen und stärker projektbezogen für das Lobbying bei Einzelvorhaben.

Resumo As Companhias Militares e de Segurança Privada (CMSP), desde o final de 1990, se tornam atores importantes em contextos de conflitos armados, oferecendo diferentes serviços militares e de segurança a outros atores do Sistema Internacional. Assim, este artigo se desenvolve a partir do questionamento sobre como as CMSP se envolvem no processo de securitização para que um tema seja tratado de modo emergencial usando seus serviços. A hipótese é que o lobby dessas empresas funcionará como um ator securitizador. A partir disso, o objetivo da pesquisa é analisar a atividade lobista das Companhias Militares e de Segurança Privada e para isso realizar-se-á um estudo de caso sobre o lobby da Blackwater ao longo de sua atuação na Guerra do Iraque em 2008. Essas dinâmicas serão analisadas sob a ótica da teoria da securitização, proposta pela Escola de Copenhague. Para cumprir tal objetivo será realizada uma revisão de literatura para tratar de conceitos como Companhias Militares e de Segurança Privada e lobby e para apresentar o contexto do estudo de caso. Além disso, será feita uma análise de fontes primárias, como relatórios do governo estadunidense referentes à atividade lobista em busca da compreensão dos discursos apresentados. A partir do desenvolvimento do trabalho, pôde-se constatar que o lobby é uma das formas de auxiliar uma CMSP a interferir no discurso de segurança, devido a sua natureza de influenciar o processo decisório.

This paper analyses the strength of the new laws regulating lobbying in Ireland and the United Kingdom (UK). This examination was conducted using the Centre for Public Integrity’s (CPI) “Hired Guns” quantitative method for assessing the stringency of lobbying legislation. These laws were introduced, after years of unfulfilled promises and scandals, in an effort to increase the public’s trust in their representative institutions. We find that the Irish Regulation of Lobbying Act 2015 offers a slightly higher level of transparency than the UK’s Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014. Additionally, using the CPI’s index allows our findings to be compared with those from other jurisdictions around the world with lobbying regulations in place.

Recent debates about corporate political speech have focused on the question of corporate personhood and the rights and obligations it implies. But even for those of us for whom the notion of corporate personhood is a crucial concept, it may make sense to think of corporations, in their lobbying activities, as tools of humans with interests, rather than as the holders of interests themselves. This paper examines the corporation not as a lobbying agent, but as a lobbying instrument, and asks whether framing lobbying in terms of the appropriate use of technology can enlighten on a vexed topic.

The regulation of lobbying at sub-national level in Spain and in Italy. In this article, we have analyzed, according to a list of criteria identified following the 2010 OECD Recommendations , the regulation on lobbying adopted by some Spanish and Italian regions in the last years. Our assumption is that, although there is a higher level of diversity among Spanish sub-national legislations, in many ways they appear to be more progressive than the Italian ones. Nonetheless, in order to overcome such fragmentation, which creates uncertainty among lob-byists and citizens, a homogenous legislative framework should be enacted at national level.

The article is a theoretical and semantic analysis of the concept of Public Interest. It starts with a focus on the ambiguity of the concepts of interest and public, whose different interpretations directly impact the understanding of the expression "Public Interest." An examination follows of the most important contributions in the literature on the idea of Public Interest. A distinction is then drawn between the concept and different conceptions of it. In particular, I propose a typology of five ideal-typical conceptions of the Public Interest: formal, substantive, realist, aggregative, and procedural. For each conception, I highlight the constitutive elements and the relevant consequences in their respective visions of democracy and of lobbying. Some expectations are finally advanced on the uses of the various conceptions in actual policymaking contexts.

L’actualité illustre régulièrement la pression exercée sur les décideurs par des entre- prises dont le chiffre d’affaires dépend de la norme juridique. Nombre d’industries extractives, des entreprises du secteur de la chimie ou des transports, luttent éner- giquement contre les perspectives d’une économie décarbonée ou autres mesures ambi- tieuses, aujourd’hui débattues par les auto- rités publiques à Bruxelles et en Europe. Le phénomène ne se réduit pourtant pas à leurs stratégies.
Quelle est l’importance du lobbying sur les questions d’environnement? Ce phénomène est-il nouveau ? Ceux que l’on désigne par facilité comme des lobbies sont-ils tous équivalents ? Quels sont les modes d’action et stratégies utilisés?
Un court article pour en rendre compte.

The participation of non-state actors in international politics has been
investigated since the creation of international institutions. Yet, the rules, principles and
norms of global governance are no longer discussed in single isolated institutions. Rather,
with the proliferation of international regimes and organizations, international issues are
now negotiated in a context of institutional interactions known as ‘regime complexes’.
This poses new questions, in particular on the negotiation burden that these new processes
place on international actors. To answer this question, this contribution compares nonstate
participation in both contexts (single regimes and regime complexes), using the
international forest negotiations as a case study. It uses quantitative methods to measure
the negotiation burden of single regimes and compare it with the negotiation burden of
regime complexes. The negotiation burden of single regimes is found to be insignificant,
political interest being the major motivation for participation, while the negotiation
burden of regime complexes is found to be real, demanding a certain type of material and
organizational resources in order for non-state actors to participate. Yet a certain diversity
of non-state representation is maintained within regime complexes, non-governmental
organizations being dominant with respect to business groups.

This paper focuses on the reasons that Italian interest groups decide to lobby together with like-minded groups ('friends'), or engage in networking activity with groups that have conflicting interests ('foes'), in order to influence public policy. How often do Italian interest groups recur to these lobbying strategies? What favours the construction of a coalition of more or less different interest groups lobbying on a particular issue? What, on the contrary, influences the decision to lobby individually? In order to answer these questions, original data coming from a national survey conducted on 1277 Italian interest groups are provided. Empirical results are interesting: from a descriptive point of view, business groups are more likely to engage in joint lobbying than other group types, whereas the same holds true for unions with respect to networking with rival organizations. From an explanatory point of view, groups that perceive themselves to be threatened by rivals' influence in policymaking, or by environmental challenges, are more likely to work in coalitions and to engage in networking: resources do not matter in 'absolute' and 'objective' terms, but in 'relative' and 'subjective' ones.

Brief textbook providing introduction to the field of public relations and related communications disciplines, eg. advertising, direct marketing, event management etc. Created for the purpose of a semestral course at Masaryk University, Brno (Czech Republic).
Main chapters: Corporate Identity and Cultury / Corporate Image, Reputation Management / Public Relations / Media Relations / Crisis Communications / Public Affairs, Government Relations and Lobbying / Internal Communications / Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Citizenship / Advertising / Direct Marketing / Event Management / Media in Corporate Communications / Political Marketing / Communication in Public Sector / Measurement of Communications

In the seventeenth century, lobbying was a primary tool for both ordinary people and organized interests to shape institutions. Lobbying could (and should!) be studied in relation to any topic in history and it is by no means unique to the Dutch colonial experience, but the Dutch West India Company (WIC) colony in North America offers a unique insight of a world and society inside a pressure cooker. In the few decades that the WIC colony existed it was subject to several major changes; from the colony, to the Company, and even to the highest political levels.
This paper answers the question how lobbying individuals shaped institutions through structuration. It starts by explaining how lobbying is defined, and how it has a place within wider theoretical and historiographical debates. It then illustrates a distinct type of lobbying, soft lobbying, in and from the WIC colony in New Netherland through source based research, focusing on issues of authority.

This book, co-edited with Mark O'Brien, presents an overview of political communication in the Republic of Ireland from a multiplicity of perspectives and sources. It brings together academics and practitioners to examine the development and current shape of political communication in modern Ireland. It also examines what the future holds for political communication in an increasingly gatekeeper-free media landscape.

The field of political communication, where journalists, public relations professionals and politicians intersect and interact, has always been a highly contested one fuelled by suspicion, mutual dependence and fraught relationships.

While politicians need the media they remain highly suspicious of journalists. While journalists remain wary of politicians, they need access to them for information. For most of the time, what emerges is a relatively stable relationship of mutual dependence with the boundaries policed by public relation professions.

However, every so often, in times of political crisis or upheaval, this relationship gives way to a near free-for-all. Politicians, spokespersons and sometimes even journalists, become fair game in the battle for public accountability and support. The determination of public relations professions to avoid this and keep the relationship based on mutual dependence has become a central component of modern statecraft and systems of governance. The need to keep politicians and the media ‘on message’ and use the media to inform, shape and manage public discourse has become central to the workings of government, opposition and interest groups.

On the other hand, the packaging of politics has potentially troublesome implications for the democratic process. In the era of the instant news cycle, new technologies and constant opinion polling, just where does information end and misinformation begin? With millions being spent annually on advisors and ‘spin-doctors’, just where does media access end and media manipulation begin?

Lobbying is a communication strategy that is considered as a complementary element of democratic systems. At the level of lobbying methods, the mobilization of public opinion has an undeniable importance where there is freedom of expression and assembly by ensuring a public sphere without the restrictions of a state. The development and expansion of the internet technology, with a specificity that makes users both creators of content, presents an opportunity to expand this public sphere in order to use the tools of the internet to exert an influence on decision-making authorities in the context of lobbying. From these notions, this final project tries to reveal the relationship between the internet and indirect lobbying as a method of lobbying.

Keywords: lobbying, public sphere, public opinion, internet

Debates on lobby regulation uncover a significant issue of the Romanian public law system as identifying its characteristics at international and Romanian level are an essential step in building the arguments of future regulations.

In this article, I aimed to perform a comparative analysis of lobby regulation characteristics in the European parliamentary systems (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden and United Kingdom), the European Union and the United Stated of America against previous Romanian regulation endeavours. Also, the article underlines the necessity of lobby regulation to comply with national fundamental rights.

Germany likely employs Europe’s largest national lobby labor force. This article presents a comprehensive study of German lobbyists’ workplaces and employer expectations of competencies. It provides insights into emerging requirements for a qualified workforce in a diversified job market.
Drawing on multiple sources of statistics, surveys and cases, a first section examines staffing and entry routes for the main employer types – associations, corporations and consultancies. The job market offers a broad range of career options. This includes an emerging set of junior training programs. German employers have devised fully-paid apprenticeship models as structured practical learning schemes where rotating workplace assignments alternate with seminar learning. Some employers partner in training alliances. Traineeships are tailor-made and unregulated, but their existence points to a growing employer interest in formally developing a talent base and professionalism.
A second section offers a job market snapshot based on 189 advertisements from 2012 to 2014. Job ads can be assumed to be an objective measure of employers’ articulated intentions and expectations for a quality pool of applicants. The survey tabulates preferences for experience, academic degrees, knowledge areas, personal, social and method competencies, and specific political expert skills. Results demonstrate a complex interplay of qualifications and requirements. Ads also show great variety and ambiguity, suggesting that lobbying lacks standardized job classifications and a stable common vocabulary.
Findings show that organizational settings influence task and competency combinations expressed in job ads. While all employers appear to follow similar recruiting patterns in regard to some qualifications, they also differ. For example, associations and businesses place more emphasis on policy concepts, organizational participation, coordination, administration, and direct representation than do consultancies, while the latter stress advisory roles and strategizing. Corporations get less involved in campaign advocacy. Associations focus on members. Consulting firms tend to recruit younger, less experienced staff, and to less often request domain knowledge. Highlighting commonalities and differences, this paper may help stimulate discussion on explicating employers’ competency-based human capital management and recruiting practices.
The results may help develop guidelines for apprenticeship schemes, continuing education, organized efforts of professional bodies and university curricula.

The purpose of this article is to show the origins of the Polish lobbying legislation on the
background of the development of this phenomenon and, particularly, a critical analysis of the
first Polish Lobbying Act, a pioneering legislation not only in the national, but also European
and even global, context. Information contained in this article is, necessarily, of an indicative
nature only. It is focused on most important historical facts and provides substantial arguments
against the object and the content of the Act. The Act on Lobbying Activity in the Law-Making
Process adopted on 7 September 2006 came into force on 7 March 2006. Beside the Polish one,
there exist only four more lobbying acts in Europe (in Georgia, Lithuania, Hungary and
Toskany). The main reason for poor European performance in this area is still insufficient in-
terest of the law sciences in lobbying often treated as an alien concept (typical of the USA).
The first bill on lobbying activity submitted in Polish Parliament was a Deputies’ Bill. Nev-
ertheless, it has not been adopted. The second bill, drafted by the Government and submitted in
October 2003, faced considerable criticism after its adoption. The main critical arguments are:
a) erroneous assumptions of the regulation designed to realize the demand for fighting corrup-
tion and ensuring transparency of public life, b) limitation of the scope of the regulation to in-
clude only the law-making process, c) too broad and vague definition and the lack of appropriate
exclusions relating to the scope of regulation and subject thereof, d) imposition of reporting re-
quirements on lobbying “addressees” without placing equivalent obligations on lobbyists and
their principals, e) poor legislative quality of the Act, f) loopholes in the system of sanctions for
application of the Act, g) failure to include many strictly lobbying issues, g) lack of consistency
with other regulations existing in the Polish legal system.
The Polish legislator has not decided to apply the most accepted model of lobbying regula-
tion consisting in the conjunction of three elements (hitherto recognized to be mutually exclu-
sive): lobbying control act, anticorruption law and self-regulation of the community by means
of codes of ethics. Poland needs good law governing lobbying activity. Failure to enact proper
legislation in this respect not only leads to a situation where the decision-making process may
be dominated and common good jeopardized by prominent well-organized groups of interest,
but also does not permit the existence of various facilities and benefits of harmonious lobbying
activities as a vital element of a modern democratic state.

Il volume affronta in chiave interdisciplinare e comparata un tema cruciale delle democrazie contemporanee: la fisiologia e la patologia dell'attività di lobbying. La legittimità e il perimetro di questo canale di partecipazione al processo decisionale pubblico sono stati, a lungo, velati da ambiguità terminologiche e pre-giudizi ideologico-moralistici. In un contesto segnato dalla crisi del principio di rappresentanza politica, dall'appannarsi del confine pubblico/privato e dalla forte differenziazione degli interessi collettivi in una società sempre più complessa, diviene ancor più imprescindibile un ripensamento del valore e dei limiti di liceità della rappresentanza di interessi particolari e, sul versante penalistico, del delitto di traffico di influenze illecite di cui all'art. 346-bis del codice penale. Infatti, nella persistente carenza di una regolamentazione organica dell'attività di lobbisti e gruppi di pressione, la fattispecie penale vigente, recentemente riformulata dalla legge n. 3/2019, si rivela inidonea a fissare un discrimine chiaro e ragionevole tra condotte di influenza lecite e, di contro, punibili. Conclude il volume un progetto integrato di disciplina della rappresentanza di interessi e di riformulazione del delitto di traffico di influenze, nell'intento di soddisfare principi cardine del diritto penale (tassatività, materialità, offensività, proporzione punitiva) ed esigenze di effettiva residualità della risposta penalistica

With a very few exceptions, scholars have devoted little attention to the analysis of the Italian interest system so far. This paper aims to address exactly this lacuna. Following a diachronic perspective, the combination of a population ecology approach with the analysis of interest groups’ access to parliament makes it possible to measure the level of bias characterising a fundamental part of interest group representation in Italy. Empirical findings suggest that—over time—the density of the system increased, and also diversity changed to a great extent. Furthermore, the Italian interest system—at least with regard to parliamentary access—appears less biased in recent years than it was in the 1980s. Among the potential factors that pushed in this direction, this article sheds light on a factor often neglected in the literature: the impact of parties and party systems on interest group representation and bias. More precisely, due to the political and institutional turmoil of early 1990s, parties lost their previous role of policy gatekeepers and this implied that the policymaking process is now more chaotic, as well as open to many more different actors than it was in the past, when only interest groups which were ‘collateral’ to parties could have a role in the policymaking.

Reprinted in: S. Hummelbrunner/L. Kirchmair/B. Pirker/A.-C. Prickartz/I. Staudinger (eds), Shaping the Future of Europe, Vienna: Jan Sramek Verlag 2022, 15-51

Citizens’ perception that lawmaking is dominated by special interests undermines their trust in democratic institutions and lawmaking processes. This also applies to the EU, where lobby regulation remains weak despite past lobbying scandals. While the European Commission and the European Parliament established a Joint Transparency Register in 2011, registration remains voluntary for lobbyists. Only in 2019 did the Parliament make a further step towards transparency by encouraging or even requiring political representatives to disclose their meetings with lobbyists. Given that domestic lobbies have increasingly been oriented towards the European supranational realm, adopting effective lobby regulation at EU level has become more essential than ever to protect the democratic legitimacy of EU lawmaking. This especially applies to the European Parliament, which has important decision-making powers in the context of the ordinary legislative procedure, and which represents the citizens of the EU, thereby constituting a key lobbying target. My goal, in this paper, is to show why and how lobbying should be further regulated in the European Parliament. I first examine the specificities of lobbying in the EU and in its Parliament, before looking at the EU’s constitutional framework, as well as EU parliamentary law and the Joint Transparency Register. I then evaluate the Parliament’s current regulation of lobbying from the perspective of EU primary law. I argue that its narrow focus on transparency is misguided and neglects other fundamental democratic values, such as equality. Moreover, the existing framework does not sufficiently focus on MEPs’ duties of integrity.

El presente libro Perfeccionamientos a la Ley del Lobby es basado en un taller con representantes del sector público, privados dedicados a la actividad de lobby y expertos del mundo académico, la publicación constituye una reflexión sobre la actual legislación chilena y los espacios de mejora hacia el futuro, tomando como referencia mejores prácticas de otros países.

This report is about the ethics and transparency of corporate political organising. Its case study is Airbnb, one of the biggest companies in the ‘platform’ economy, who resources, mobilises and coordinates its landlords as political advocates to lobby for its preferred forms of regulation. Since 2008, numbers of short-term lettings, many of which might otherwise house permanent residents, have expanded dramatically. The associated problems, around housing shortages, tourism, taxation and urban conviviality, have led to social movement opposition and local attempts to regulate.

Airbnb’s use of grassroots lobbying, where businesses influence democratic institutions by creating and coordinating apparently independent social movements to act on their behalf, has been key in their response. Airbnb presents carefully curated and intensively coordinated groups of landlords with a single room or property as ‘people power’: independent grassroots groups who share its policy preferences. This offers the company legitimacy and additional political influence to protect a business model that is increasingly dominated by professional accommodation providers.