Apie prielaidas neveikti lobistinės veiklos teisiniam reglamentavimui Lietuvoje
On Preconditions for Non-Operation of Legal Regulation of Lobbying in Lithuania

Summary/Abstract: Aim of the article is to evaluate why the Law of the Republic of Lithuania on Lobbying Activities and the provisions related to it are not implemented in practice. For this purpose the article assesses the officially declared aims of the regulation of lobbying activities, discusses the establishment of clients of lobbying activities and subjects holding the status of a lobbyist, as well analyses the ways and reasons for failure to apply the method of “whip and honey cake” inherent to the regulation of social relations, shortly describes the actual volume of the official lobbying determined by the legal regulation in effect. The main problem of the law has been pre-programmed already during the procedure of the preparation and the deliberation of the draft law, as the creators thereof steeped in the search of a mystical “ideal model” in legal systems which had already implemented it, first of all, the law of the United States of the America. Upon the evaluation of the Law on Lobbying Activities taking into account the genuine purpose of it (to satisfy the formal need of bureaucratic process of the European Union and the compliance of the criteria for the aimed membership of the European Union) it becomes obvious that the drafted law even failed to have sufficient preconditions to be operating. The formality and triviality of adoption of the Law is clearly understood from the fact that it was adopted in a notably short term: only two months passed from the submission to the adoption (the draft law was registered within the Secretariat of the Plenary Session of the Seimas on 27 April 2000, and was adopted on 27 June of the same year). The circumstances mentioned allow to formulate some insights. First of all, in accordance with the Law on Lobbying Activities adopted in 2000, the lobbying activity following the pattern of the United States was regulated as a sui generis type of business, failing to regulate the problematic aspect of this activity – the process of influence-making. Meanwhile, the declared aims were in fact opposite – the regulation (the establishment and making transparent) of actual activities instead of creation of field and type of business. In this sense it is natural that the real lobbying activity upon the adoption of the law and after more than a decade from the coming into effect has remained beyond the field of action. As well, a new legal form of business in fact has not emerged. As regards other objectives, it is not difficult to notice that they have not been achieved as well, as the provisions regarding liability for breach of lobbying activities are not actually operative; corruption in legislation is not precluded, transparency in drafting of legal acts is not activated.The Law on Lobbying Activities in effect provides more than ten rights attributed to lobbyists. Unfortunately, the evaluation of these rights in the general context of the law of the Republic of Lithuania necessitates admitting that the attribution thereof to lobbyists is barely fictious. It does not mean that these rights are not granted to them in general. However, in accordance with the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania and other laws in effect, they are submitted to any other subject without reference to the registration as a lobbyist. Such circumstances lead to a situation where law in effect discourages persons from registering officially as lobbyists.Law of the Republic of Lithuania not only fails to submit any additional rights (fails to propose the so-called “honey cake”), but as well fails to ensure measures of effective legal liability (the so called “whip”). Although specific provisions of the Code of Administrative Offences establishing particular sanctions are in effect already more than ten years, nobody (to be precise – nobody from natural persons) has been punished for “breach of requirements of the Law on Lobbying Activities” yet. In the sense of administrative (legal) liability there is not only inoperative provision, but as well a gap, as a legal person entitled to be a subject of lobbying activities is not subject to administrative liability in accordance with the provisions of the Code of Administrative Offences (as this Code is applicable to natural persons exclusively). It must be mentioned, that a person illegally carrying out lobbying activities (both natural and legal person) may be held liable under criminal law. However, there is no information on any cases of at least pre-trial investigation on this matter. In any case, criminal liability for performance of illegal lobbying activities has never been applied in Lithuania as well. In 2010, the register of lobbyists contained 24 registered lobbyists. However, only 7 lobbyists (5 natural persons and 2 legal persons) included in the register performed lobbying activities during the mentioned year. The lobbying effect is declared in relation with 52 legal acts. Taking into account the fact that during this period the Seimas adopted 453 laws and almost 200 resolutions, and the Government adopted almost 2000 resolutions (not talking about much greater numbers of legal acts adopted by other institutions), the proportion of the official lobbying volume and the number of adopted legal acts is obviously inadequate. Talking about the reasons of non-operation it is necessary to mention a notably great number of subjects eliminated from the list of potential lobbyists: non-profit seeking subjects satisfying the needs of the members thereof (associations, trade unions, religious organisations, etc.), subjects satisfying their own interests (for example, big business groups), as well similar groups cannot be recognized as lobbyists. Taking into account the fact, that the effect to the Lithuanian legislature made by subjects classified under the mentioned categories is obviously predominant, the elimination of these categories renders the regulation of lobbying activities ab initio inoperative. To resume the consideration on legal regulation of lobbying activities it must be stated, that it is ineffective and fails to achieve the objectives laid down both within the Law on Lobbying Activities in effect now and in the first valid version of the law: the regulation of lobbying activities in the field of drafting and adoption of legal acts is actually incomplete; the provisions of legal liability for the breach of the requirements for these activities are actually inoperative, corruption in the procedure of legislature is not precluded, processes of transparent drafting of legal acts are not activated.

• Details
• Contents