LOBBYING LANDSCAPE IN ESTONIA

The main lobbyists in Estonia are trade and industry associations, private enterprises, consultant lobby firms and civil society organizations. Trade unions, industry associations and professional unions are the oldest and most transparent lobby groups in the country. Further distinction is made between in-house lobbyists and consultant lobbyists. Larger businesses (usually multinational) employ lawyers or have PR departments. In addition, personal contributions from CEOs are considered highly effective when lobbying politicians. Public relations professionals and lawyers are known as consultant lobbyists. The emerging group of professionals from the PR sector who openly define themselves as lobbyists have a background in high-level party politics, public administration, or more often the media, where they have established contacts and an understanding of the system. The most active lobbyists in Estonia are law firms. Many of them offer their clients full service of legal analysis and representation.

There are around 20-30 professional lobbyists who could be categorized as consultant lobbyists, while the number could reach 300 when various interest representation organizations and in-house specialists are included. The Estonian lobbying scene is as small as the country itself. Often people know each other through previous studies or work. Calls between interest groups and decision makers are regular practice and not only because of personal connections but also because it increases efficiency.

There are three types of lobbying that stakeholders in Estonia distinguish. There are inclusion practices where interest groups are formally invited to provide input. Secondly, there is ethical lobbying with organizing official meetings, writing letters, initiating media campaigns and other proactive measures to suggest changes through regular communication. Thirdly, there is unethical lobbying where practices border corruption with cases that fall into an ethically or legally grey area. Examples include expensive gifts and discounts, encouraging officials to steer decisions by using their position (trading in influence), hidden party financing and unofficial meetings during free time.

Lobbying in Estonia is ill-defined, and although of clear democratic benefit, has a negative perception in the public eye due to repeated scandals and intertwined relations between business and public sector. There is no regulation of lobbying, nor is there an active debate on ethics of lobbying. Within the general political culture in Estonia there are most vulnerable to risky lobbying practices, including: hidden party financing; non-transparent practices in some stages of consultation and law-making; intertwined relations between business and the public sector; and weak democratic safeguards within political parties, which can hamper transparent decision-making

There is insufficient transparency at multiple levels and stages of the public decision-making process, leaving citizens and interest groups in the dark. Insufficient monitoring and enforcement, allow for conflicts of interest. As there is no common understanding of ethical lobbying in Estonia, undesirable influencing practices are able to flourish. For example, lobbyists do not always say who they represent or what they advocate for and, as a result, narrow interests can dominate in highly technical and area-specific laws. Moreover, unequal resources between those seeking to design policies and laws often result in disproportionate influence. Although some participation mechanisms do exist, they are not codified, leading to a diverse and confusing practice, and furthermore are often pro forma and rushed, preventing the effective input of the broader public into government decision-making. This is only exacerbated by the lack of any self-regulation initiatives, and the relative weakness or absence of the NGO and media watchdogs.

Decision-making in parliament is especially problematic because it is often difficult to know why certain decisions were taken and who has been influential in the course of decision-making processes. Furthermore, there is lack of oversight on lobbying ethics, and oftentimes communication between lobbyists and decision makers happens out of the public eye, behind closed doors. The decision makers are not obliged and often fail to explain why some amendments are accepted while others are not and which interest groups and parliamentarians have contributed via working groups or proposals leading to lack of transparency in legislative processes in the Estonian parliament.

As lobbying is not defined and as there is no clear understanding of who a lobbyist is, no formal self-regulatory norms exist for lobbyists as a group. In addition, there have been no independent efforts among lobbyists to self-regulate. However, most of the groups that participate in lobbying in Estonia have more general ethics codes to guide them in their conduct. PR professionals, the bar association and NGOs have ethics codes. PR professionals have an association that has 72 members but specialists who are active in lobbying are not part of the association. Their ethics code covers very general topics like honesty and responsibility in defending the interests of their clients. The Estonian Bar Association has 910 members, and has a thorough ethics code appropriate to their name. Independence from public and private interests and confidentiality to the client is emphasized. As for NGOs, NENO has prepared several guidebooks on how to effectively and ethically influence the decision-making process. NENO consists of 110 civil society organizations. The NGOs ethics code encourages organizations to be transparent, accountable, and open about their interests. It also encourages independence from state and business organizations and advocating citizens’ interests. Trade associations and unions have behavioural codes to ensure ethical conduct when advocating an interest. However, lobbying as such is not mentioned in any of the codes.

Recommendations (TI)

1. Improve consultation practices: publish legislative drafts earlier and include information on the input provided by interest groups. Consultation practices should be unified by the State Chancellery and the Ministry of Finance by focussing on this topic in ethics trainings.
2. Introduce a legislative footprint in order to follow how drafts become laws. The Ministry of Justice in cooperation with other relevant state offices (the State Chancellery, the Parliament) should initiate a new regulation to start collecting and publishing further details on legislative input.
3. Establish codes of conduct and self-regulation mechanisms for lobbyists and public sector employees. Larger NGOs, trade and industry organizations should work on self-regulation.
4. MPs and consultant lobbyists should be the first targets of regulation because these two groups tend to be involved in the most concealed lobbying practices. MPs should continue to discuss and establish rules of ethics to include how to deal with lobbyists.
5. Increase internal party democracy and monitor party funding more effectively. The parties should make their procedures more transparent, for example publish details of their rules of decision making, voting results, and how they establish their priorities.
6. Provide equal, transparent and timely access to decision-making processes by interest groups as well as the media. Estonian Data Protection Inspectorate in co-operation with the State Chancellery and the Ministry of Finance should clarify what kind of documents are to be published by public officials. Ideally, the Parliament should publish detailed minutes of their committee meetings.