Lobbying is part of politics. However, it should be conducted according to clear and objective rules and not at the discretion of individual parliamentarians. A few weeks ago, the Council of States’ Political Institutions Committee decided to increase transparency among lobbyists in the Federal Parliament and to limit their physical presence. This is a long overdue necessity! However, the proposed implementation is completely unsuitable. The preliminary draft stipulates that in future, each member of parliament will only be allowed to issue one access pass to external lobbyists, instead of two as is currently the case. This solution does not address the core of the problem, but merely covers it up with cosmetic measures.
Limiting the personal allocation of access rights for lobbyists in the Federal Parliament to one person per parliamentarian only exacerbates the problem that only those lobbyists who have the best relationships with the National Council and Council of States – and who very often do them favours – are granted access. In return, individual parliamentarians have their electronic or physical mailboxes cleared, their election campaigns organised or their speeches written. Sometimes, official access badges are also handed out under the table in exchange for money. Conditions like in ancient Rome; in other countries, this would be called corruption – certainly unworthy of a constitutional democracy like Switzerland.
Efforts in the Federal Parliament to organise the democratically legitimised access of lobbyists in a transparent manner must be based on objective rules. The question is ‘how’. Given the spatial limitations of the lobby, voices are quickly being raised calling for personnel quotas in the Federal Parliament. However, delegating the allocation of places to parliamentarians perpetuates the dubious cycle of favours and discriminates against those applicants who do not want to or cannot participate in it.
How is access regulated in other countries? In Germany, there are two ways for lobbyists to gain access to the Bundestag. On the one hand, associations that register on a public list of lobbyists maintained by parliament can request an access pass. Alternatively, lobbyists also have the option of gaining access through the parliamentary secretaries of the political groups. A similar starting point, but with one crucial difference. The decision-making power over access to the Bundestag does not lie solely with the parliamentarians. In the USA, the system is even more transparent. There is a public list of all interest representatives, who must disclose who they are lobbying for and what fees they are receiving.
Such a public list would also be useful in Switzerland to provide a transparent overview of the influential factors and interest groups. This is also envisaged as ‘best practice’ in the preliminary draft of the Political Institutions Committee. The conditions for participation must be subject to strict requirements. Lobbyists must be subject to clear regulations, which, among other things, require them to disclose the motivation for their assignment and the client. In my opinion, anyone who identifies themselves in this way should in future be entitled to receive appropriate access authorisation from the parliamentary services. In order to avoid overcrowding in the lobby, the parliamentary services could stipulate that a lobbyist may only visit Parliament on a certain number of days, e.g. 20 times a year. Employees of the general secretariats of the parties and other specialists could be exempted from this restriction. Similarly, France limits the number of lobbyists present in the parliament building by not issuing them with permanent passes, but only granting them access on a daily basis. Germany, on the other hand, limits the number of lobbyists by restricting the number of members represented per association or lobbying firm. Lobbyists who violate these rules, e.g. by not publishing their mandates properly, must be warned and, in the event of a repeat offence, banned.
Lobbying is part of democracy. But please: according to transparent and objective rules, not at will and arbitrarily. Anything else is not worthy of the Swiss democratic tradition.
*This article appeared as a guest commentary in the 2 March edition of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) and on nzz.ch.