LEGISLATIVE FOOTPRINT IN EU MEMBER STATES

Austria: Officials are not obliged to report which lobbyists they consulted, or the topic of their discussions. In addition, regarding the legislative footprint, the transparency of the formulation of a law is not very clear. In Austria, Federal ministry working papers are posted online before they can be discussed in parliament. On the parliament website, there are bills and comments submitted in writing to the parliament during the review period as well as the final legal text. However, if an individual was involved in the original draft or provided input during a personal discussion, there is absolutely no detailed documentation available, unless voluntarily provided by the respective officials.

Cyprus: Although in Cyprus there is no law requiring the publication of a ‘Legislative Footprint’ as an annex to all legislative records, the Attorney General requires an Impact Assessment Questionnaire to be completed and attached to proposed bills/legislation submitted to the Attorney General’s Department for legislative checks. Once the Attorney General approves a proposed bill it is submitted to Parliament for voting, along with the Impact Assessment Questionnaire (IAQ). The IAQ aims to reflect the procedures which led to the drafting of the proposed bill. In addition, senior public officials and public representatives are not required to publish documentation related to meetings held prior to drafting the bill. A random review of the IAQ is made through the Parliament as well as on occasions when there is cause for concern that the procedure outlined in the IAQ has not been fully observed. In addition, all of the Parliamentary Committees prepare a report that accompanies any legislation that has been submitted to Parliament for enactment. The report highlights the reasons why the Parliamentary Committee met, who attended the meetings, highlights of the discussions, and pinpoints the positions taken by the political parties and stakeholders. Of course, meetings held behind closed doors are not mentioned. The reports by the Parliamentary Committees do not accompany the legislations as an annex. The reports can be found on the webpage of the House of Representatives on the date the legislation is passed. This makes the information difficult to locate since an interested party needs to know the date the legislation passed, rather than having the ‘report’ as an annex to the legislation itself. If a Legislative Footprint was mandatory, and easy to access, high ranking officials charged with making important decisions for the overall Cypriot society, would have to provide solid explanations for their decisions. This would make them more accountable as they would take into consideration that a biased decision would lead to societal scrutiny.

Estonia: Piecemeal requirements to indicate who has sought to influence legislative or policy making processes in place. Some but insufficient information on contacts publicly disclosed by legislators/public officials. No requirement to make documentation related to meetings public.

Finland: A government bill incorporates a description of why it has been proposed, an account of the consultation process, and a brief summary of stakeholders' comments.

France: In France, the authors of parliamentary reports in the National Assembly must annex a list of persons consulted. However, this obligation does not apply to other institutions that participate in the decision-making process. Therefore, while there are requirements for tracking the consulted interests groups at the Assembly level, the potential of the tool is not used to the fullest since it fails to provide an exhaustive list of all consulted interest groups at the final stage of legislation.

Germany: In Germany, Federal government decisions are prepared for by way of written cabinet submissions. The covering letters must contain 1. a brief outline of the matter and a statement on the reason for proposing the decision; 2. details of which Federal ministries were involved and with what results; 3. the results to emerge from consulting associations, particularly their main suggestions; 4. the results produced by input from Länder governments and any problems expected- especially if a Bundesrat procedure is required; 5. the opinion of the Federal government commissioners, Federal commissioners and Federal government co-ordinators involved; 6. the foreseeable costs and budgetary effects of implementing the proposed decision.

Hungary:The law does not require the publication of a legislative footprint of lobbying, i.e. a report on who lobbied whom and on what purpose prior to adopting the respective piece of legislation. Executive summaries attached to legislative proposals are not accessible publicly, if such a proposal is uploaded on the government’s or the Parliament’s website, a common practice is that these summaries are previously removed as a matter of course. Even though the executive summary does not contain the legislative footprint of lobbying, it includes important information concerning the reasons why the specific legislation was needed. These summaries, as so-called ‘prepping documents’, are deemed non-accessible public data under the Law on Freedom of Information.

Italy: Monitoring the entire decision-making process is a rather difficult task to accomplish. In particular, it is difficult to attain information regarding the initial stages of a draft of law, when it goes through the parliamentary commissions. It is also difficult to trace the process of consultation of government or other public representatives with relevant stakeholders. Few mechanisms exist on public participation and their reporting. What is lacking the most is a legislative footprint detailing all the information about legislators and public officials’ meetings with stakeholders. These are yet to be added to legislative records.  No legislative footprint foreseen in law,  No information on contacts publicly disclosed by legislators/public officials,  No requirement to make documentation related to meetings public.

Latvia: In Latvia, any draft law that comes before the Latvian parliament should enclose an explanatory note, in which, among other things, all consultations that have been held while preparing the draft law should be specified. In principle this explanatory note should also indicate the lobbyist, with whom the submitter of the draft law has consulted. The footprint does not function as intended however, because institutions do not follow the rules and there is no oversight or verification system in place to compel them to do so.

Poland: In Poland, the act on lobbying compels ministries to publish all documents related to the drafting of particular legal acts. Those interested in a piece of legislation, including professional lobbyists, must provide relevant ministries with declarations describing the interest that they are planning to defend or promote during their work. Those declarations are also made public.

Slovenia: In Slovenia, there is no specific systemic solution that would ensure a legislative footprint, as it is not obligatory to report such contacts. There is some public information available on request, such as lobbying reports and drafts of legislation undergoing obligatory public debate before the passing of law. Participation of stakeholders is public and ensures some traceability of the influence, which is also guaranteed with open access to normative plans and documentation on drafting and passing regulation. These are available on the government’s, the municipalities’ and the ministries’ web pages, on the online portal E-Uprava (e-administration), and finally, the documentation of the legislative procedure on the web page of National Assembly (the parliament). However, in many cases the government hires external services, including private actors and interested associations to draft regulations. This process is often opaque and does not undergo the required public consultations.  Most important laws are written by law firms and companies that can intentionally add certain loopholes in favour of business and to the detriment of public assets. The government made a first step toward a legislative footprint, with updating its Rules of Procedure and expanding the range of information that ensures transparency of the preparation of legislation. They now include the information of who participated in the preparation of the law. The information on where, when and who lobbied and what information was included in to the law because of the lobbying contact is not included. The issue of an effective legislative footprint still exists because the Ministry does not obey the rules, while no sanctions are prescribed. The same legislative footprint does not apply for the members of the National Assembly.