In Portugal, almost nobody is a lobbyist because the “lobby” does not exist | Megaphone
Every time I say I’m a lobbyist in Brussels, I see the eyebrows rising. In Portugal, almost no one is a lobbyist. In Portuguese, Hall still sounds like too much of a kind of Gateway to corrupt
According to a recent study by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation on the subject, the legal vacuum that exists regarding the way in which “interest groups” interact with policy makers is unavoidable. This makes it very difficult to scrutinize relations between associations and deputies to the Assembly of the Republic and members of the Government. If it is easy to see with whom politicians and decision-makers meet and which union of their companies, it is to assess how this politician is influenced by an association, profession, profession or individual.
It is equally difficult to make your relationship with all subjects. If endowed with an appropriate level of transparency, the Government, the State and Parliament become more accessible and understandable to all.
O Hall — or, softening, the advocacy — is not hidden if it doesn’t happen sometimes. Without any transparency, the game is open to demonstrate a healthy democracy. And it is precisely here that my countrymen’s suspicion lies — what makes politicians unable to agree on this issue, do they have something to hide? Of course, it is the answer that emerges from the analysis of the privacy of the political class in Portugal.
In recent years, a discussion has arisen in Portugal about the need to legislate the Hallbut possibly projects with legs to walk apparently distant, either for lack of support or agreement, or for presidential political veto — ironically based on the gap in the applicability of the diploma to the president. 21 that the Interinstitutional Agreement was signed, reaffirming and reinforcing the role of the European Council Transparency Record, a database of interest groups that make Hall with institutional institutions, where interactions between policy makers and representatives of these groups are recorded.
The existence of transparency mechanisms allows the Hall A strong economic activity in Brussels that is developed in European multidisciplinary teams and that dedicate themselves daily to participate directly and indirectly in the elaboration of legislation.
In short, if a politician is given the option of meeting only those interested parties who are most in agreement with him and not listening at all to what other parties have to say on an issue, if this option cannot be right to be challenged because he is unknown, who loses is the country. It loses because legislation is made by parties obeying their ideology and their parliamentary power, it loses because the door is opened to opaque influences and conflicts of interest that are impossible to scrutinize. You lose because you can’t say you’re a lobbyist like someone else.
Meanwhile, there are “public relations” and “government affairs” that everyone is asking themselves about what they really do… Yes, it is also Hall. In the meantime, I’m going to be a lobbyist out there because in Portugal nobody is a lobbyist.