The discussion of the projects was scheduled for this morning in the Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms, and Guarantees Committee but was postponed at the request of the Socialist Party, with the agreement of the other members.
These proposals will be debated next Friday at 9 a.m., an hour before the plenary debate with the presence of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro.
PSD deputy António Rodrigues emphasized the necessity of “efforts for coordination, considering the consensus that has been created on this matter” to arrive at a final joint text.
The social-democrat also stressed the intention to conclude this legislative process within this year, stating that to meet the deadline, the voting should occur next Friday.
The proposals for lobbying regulation were approved in general on July 11, following a debate that outlined the goal of reaching a common text in general terms.
The initiatives from various parties, with more similarities than differences, share the common objective of approving transparency rules applicable to private entities that engage in legitimate interest representation with public entities (commonly known as lobbying) and creating a transparency register for that interest representation.
All agree that this register should be public, free, and mandatory for all interest representatives wishing to interact with public entities, differing on where it should be headquartered: most parties believe the Assembly of the Republic should be responsible, while the Liberal Initiative (IL) considers the Transparency Entity more suitable and People-Animals-Nature (PAN) seeks the involvement of the National Anti-Corruption Mechanism.
Another specialization discussion point will be the scope of incompatibilities between lobbying activity and other professions.
On this point, PS, Chega, CDS-PP, or IL believe that lawyering should be incompatible with lobbying.
The PSD excludes from the law’s scope “the practice of acts specific to lawyers and solicitors in the exercise of forensic mandate” but admits that these professionals can engage in lobbying with public entities while registering and identifying their clients in this context.
PAN considers that all activities of lawyers could be covered by the law.
All proposals include a provision for the register to be accompanied by a Code of Conduct and a mechanism to track the legislative footprint of projects.
