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Session in the plenary hall of the Bundestag
Photo: via www.imago-images.de / imago images / Political-Moments
A whole series of lobby scandals has shaken politics in the past two years: the lucrative brokerage of mask business by members of parliament, the Wirecard scandal, Philipp Amthor's commitment to Augustus Intelligence, the dubious connections of some parliamentarians to Azerbaijan.
At the end of the current legislative period, the lobby control transparency initiative is now presenting its balance sheet. This Wednesday, the organization will present the lobby report 2021, in which it will process various cases and assess the progress of politics in five areas: lobby register, transparency of legislation, switching sides between government and lobby, party funding and ancillary activities by members of parliament.
The conclusions of the reports are mixed: some progress has been made, which, however, is also due to the »comparatively large number of scandals«.
This election period revealed "a problematic proximity between politics and strong corporate lobbies", especially in the Union.
»Political decision-makers: inside, parties and democratic institutions repeatedly put themselves at the service of such 'strong' particular interests - and thus fail in their function as guardians of the common good."
Lobby register with expansion potential
In the report, LobbyControl praises the introduction of a lobby register. A corresponding draft law was drawn up in the course of the Philipp Amthor affair in summer 2020, but the process then stalled. It was not until the beginning of this year that the mask business of several members of the Union became known that the law was finally enacted, and it will come into force in 2022. Anyone lobbying the Bundestag or the government will have to register in the future and disclose their clients.
The lobby register represents an important breakthrough, but it does not go far enough, the report says. In particular, the authors criticize the lack of a so-called legislative footprint. Such a footprint is intended to make transparent when and how lobbyists were involved in the legislative process, for example by publishing written statements from lobbying associations and identifying passages of law adopted by third parties. The Ministry of Justice under SPD Minister Christine Lambrecht had worked out a corresponding addition during the debate on the lobby register, but ultimately the proposal did not prevail.
The organization rates the regulations on secondary employment and conflicts of interest for MPs as positive.
In this legislative period, the largest reform of the rules for MPs since 2005 was passed.
The SPD, the Union, the Greens and the Left jointly agreed on a draft law that provides for various tightenings for MPs.
For example:
MPs are prohibited from lobbying against parliament and the government for a fee.
Additional income must be stated from EUR 3000 instead of the previous EUR 10,000.
Shareholdings in companies must be made public from five percent and no longer from 25 percent as was previously the case.
Non-transparent donation policy
Lobbycontrol sees a shortcoming, however, in the fact that control of the new rules remains with the Bundestag administration and is not transferred to an independent body.
The fact that several MPs had not reported their ancillary income for years made it clear that "the supervisory authority is not effectively controlling the applicable rules."
On the other hand, the report found no improvements on the issue of party donations.
Lobbycontrol sharply criticizes the existing donation practice.
"It is relatively easy to exert financial influence while circumventing the applicable transparency rules for private party financing in Germany."
This is related, for example, to the fact that party sponsorship is still not made transparent.
According to this, companies can sponsor events organized by parties without them having to indicate this.
Corporations such as Daimler or VW make use of this option again and again and financed party events worth several 10,000 euros.
More integrity and independence
The organization also sees a need to catch up in the regulation of traditional party donations.
So far there is no upper limit for donations.
In addition, these do not have to be published later in the statement of accounts until they reach an amount of EUR 10,000, and the Bundestag must be notified immediately of EUR 50,000 or more.
This leads to donations being broken down into partial amounts and deliberately kept below these thresholds.
Lobbycontrol cites the example of Deutsche Vermögensberatung AG: Although the company donated a mid-six-figure amount to the CDU every year, not a single amount over 50,000 euros was reported between 2011 and 2021.
The organization calls for the transparency thresholds to be lowered and an upper limit to be introduced.
The next federal government is now expected to finally take on issues such as the legislative footprint and party financing and to advocate “a political culture in which integrity and independence, transparency and accountability are lived every day”.
Only in this way will politics be able to successfully cope with major tasks such as corona and the climate crisis in the future.