LOBBYING LANDSCAPE IN POLAND

Rules and regulations are often ignored in Poland. Informal networks of friends and family contacts are dominating. Decision making tends to be secretive, no transparency. Official meetings are often less important than what happens before and after. Without effective functioning mechanism of rules and sanctions informal networks often turn into political corruption, bribery, nepotism, clientelism.

Lobbying in Poland is mainly performed in an informal manner outside the regulated area based on informal links between some parliamentarians and business and the influence the latter may have over legislation by their contacts with the former.

There are about 300 professional registered lobbyists in Poland but only 20 of them are active in the Parliament. Unregistered lobbyists often appear in Parliament as expert or acting on behalf of various entities. Parliamentarians try to avoid contacts with ‘Professional Lobbyists’ as under the Law they have to report such contacts. Anyone who needs to lobby in Poland prefers to use non-official channels rather than register as a lobbyist.

Lobbying Regulatory Framework

Poland decided to regulate lobbying activities by special legislation and in 2005 the Parliament enacted the Act of Lobbying in the Legislative Process that entered into force in March 2006.

The  Act of Lobbying in the Legislative Process is the main element of the Polish lobbying legislation. It is accompanied by three secondary regulations. Along with the entry into force of the Act, Rules of the Sejm (Lower Chamber of the Polish Parliament) were also amended.The Act of Lobbying consists of 24 articles, divided into six chapters.

Chapter 1 - General Provisions: The main components of this Chapter are the definitions of lobbying. The legislator decided to outline the general concept of lobbying, and distinguishes professional lobbying. Lobbying activities or 'lobbying' include any activities pursued by any legally permissible means, aimed at exercising influence over bodies of public authority in the legislative process, only at central, governmental and parliamentary level. 'Professional lobbying' includes lobbying activities pursued for a fee on behalf of third parties, so that the interests of such parties can be accounted for in the legislative process. Professional lobbying may be pursued by a business entity or by an individual entity, under a civil-law contract.

Chapter 2 - Principles of disclosure of lobbying activity in the legislative process: Provisions of this Chapter regulate the law making procedures that must be adapted by all ministries. The purpose of these procedures is to facilitate and help conducting and supervising lobbying activity. The most important are provisions establishing the obligation for the Council of Ministers and all ministries to prepare the legislative plans at least once every six months. The plans are simply summaries of bills and outlines of bills to be drafted. The Act also specifies that they must contain basic description of their purposes, content and contact data of persons coordinating legislative works. Another important mechanism regulated in this chapter is the procedure for declaring interest in the ongoing legislative works at the governmental level. The lobbying law provides that anyone wishing to observe legislative works, or to submit proposals of changes in the draft, must notify in writing his/her interest to the relevant ministry. All declarations of interest must be published on the websites with documentation relating to a given legislative process. Another institution regulated in this Chapter is public hearing. The provisions of the Act state that public hearings can be arranged by the ministries on drafts of ordinances or by the Parliament on bills. The Act also describes basic rules of conducting public hearings. Accordingly, only those who have previously submitted an interest declaration may take part in a public hearing; in case of governmental hearings they must be announced at least seven days before they are scheduled, etc..Governmental public hearings are also regulated in the relevant ordinance. Organization of the parliamentary hearings is set out in the Resolution on the Rules of Sejm.

Chapter 3 : The registry of entities performing professional lobbying activity, and the rules of performing professional lobbying. According to its title, the Chapter contains provisions regulating the registry of professional lobbyists. The office responsible for the registry of professional lobbyists is the Ministry of Interior and Administration (MSWiA). The ministry records an entry in the register upon request. The entry is subject to a fee, but the maximum amount of the fee cannot exceed 100 zlotys (approx. 25 EUR). Provisions also set out general rules for registration and circumstances in which the ministry may refuse an entry (e.g. in case of providing false data, either because of lack necessary data) and the scope of information which a subject applying for the entry is required to provide to the ministry. The law also allows subjects conducting professional lobbying to obtain a certificate confirming their registration. It is an important detail, as authorities carrying out legislative works may require from professional lobbyists to prove that they perform their activity legally. More detailed regulations of the registry are described in the relevant ordinance.

Chapter 4:  Supervision over professional lobbying. Ministries are required to determine the internal procedures for dealing with professional lobbyists. Officials who discover that there are subjects undertaking actions which may be familiar with the definition of professional lobbying, without registration, are required to notify the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which may impose a penalty on those subjects. Under these provisions the ministries are also obliged to prepare annual information on actions taken against them by professional lobbyists.

Chapter 5 : Penalties for violation of provisions of the Act. According to the Act, the subject conducting professional lobbying activities without registration shall be fined. A fine ranging from 3 to 50 thousand zlotys (approx. from 800 to 10 000 EUR) may be imposed by the Ministry of Interior and Administration in the form of an administrative decision. The penalty is determined by the analysis of the impact that the activities undertaken by the subject had on the decision taken by a given authority and means which were used to achieve the influence. The penalty may be imposed repeatedly.

Chapter 6:  Changes in existing laws, transitional and final provisions. This Chapter contains many important provisions, whose aim is not only to regulate lobbying but also to prevent conducting lobbying activity illegally. Among the most important solutions are changes in the Act of Law on Performing the Mandate of the Members of Sejm and the Senate obliging the disclosure of information of persons cooperating with MPs’ offices or parliamentary clubs, and political advisors to MPs. Members of Council of Ministers who employ in their cabinets advisors fall under similar obligation. These changes were introduced due to the fact that reasons of accusations against politicians that used to be subject to attempts of illegal lobbying were very often related to the experts and political advisors.

As previously mentioned the Act of Law on the Lobbying Activity in the Legislative Process is accompanied by three ordinances: the Order of the Minister of Interior and Administration of 20 February 2006 on The Registry of Subjects Performing Professional Lobbying Activity, the Order of the Council of Ministers of 24 January 2006 on the Declaration of Interest in Works On Drafts on Normative Acts and the Order of the Council of Ministers of 7 February 2006 On The Public Hearing Of Drafts of Secondary Acts. The Lobbying Act also resulted in changes in the Resolution on the Rules of Sejm. The Act expanded the use of the public hearing on Sejm. Under the new Rules a separate register of professional lobbyists conducting their activity in the parliament was also set up. Professional lobbyists have been obliged to register in the special parliamentary registry, regardless of registration in the registry of the Ministry of Interior and Administration.