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German Bundestag
Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa
The discussions dragged on for years, but now the Bundestag has decided to introduce a lobby register.
The law, which was passed late Thursday evening, requires professional stakeholders to register in a public register.
There they have to provide information about their clients.
This is intended to make it clearer in the future who has influenced political decisions and legislation.
The CDU MP Patrick Schnieder said that lobbying is not a bad thing per se, but that it must be made transparent.
Lobbyists who want to assert the interests of certain groups in the Bundestag or the federal government must not only provide information about their employers or clients in the new register, but also about the number of employees and the financial expenses for lobbying work.
Meetings in ministries will in future be recorded down to the level of sub-department heads.
The register is kept digitally at the Bundestag.
Anyone who does not follow the rules can expect a fine of up to 50,000 euros.
There will be no "executive footprint"
The opposition does not consider the regulations negotiated by the grand coalition to be sufficient.
Transparency International also complained about major shortcomings.
"We will not get any transparency about the specific lobbying work in the future either, or at most a very thin one," said the organization's head of Germany, Hartmut Bäumer, in the "Augsburger Allgemeine".
Even the SPD would have liked more extensive regulations in the joint draft law of the grand coalition.
Matthias Bartke, who negotiated the compromise with the CDU and CSU for the Social Democrats, called it a "major downer" in the Bundestag that the Union had prevented the "executive footprint".
This instrument is intended to show how legal texts have been changed specifically through the intervention of lobbyists.
jok / dpa
