Create guidelines to prevent unethical lobbying practices and conflicts of interest (EE0056)

What is the public problem that the commitment will address? Legislative drafting, including meetings with interest groups and proposing their opinions, is not sufficiently transparent in Estonia, as legislation does not define lobbying and does not require that meetings be made public. In a democratic society, everyone has the right to represent their interests, and society, in turn, has the right to know who, by what means and for what purpose, is influencing policy-making and to what extent these views have been taken into account. Based on recommendations by GRECO13, Estonia must develop guidelines for the prevention of conflicts of interest, including on the topic of meetings with interest groups, for ministers and their advisers by autumn 2020. These guidelines may result in public authorities being required to publish the meetings on their websites in the future. In addition, the processes of engagement and influencing by interest groups, which took place during drafting, are still difficult to monitor.

What is the commitment? To establish and implement guidelines for good practice in lobbying and for the prevention of conflicts of interest for ministers and their advisers and for officials. How will the commitment contribute to solving the public problem? The Conflict of Interest Guidelines, as a set of ethical principles for ministers and their advisers, helps to avoid conflicts of interest and increase the transparency and accountability of good governance practices with lobbyists.

Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values? Transparency Public accountability 13 GRECO, i.e. The Group of States against Corruption 19

Additional information The activity supports the achievement of the strategic goal of ‘Estonia 2035’, in which ‘Estonia is an innovative, reliable and people-centred country’. The activity is also associated with the activities of the ‘Anti-Corruption Strategy 2013–2020’ and its follow-up document (under preparation).

Milestone Activity Result Start date End date Development of guidelines for ministers and their advisers, in order to avoid conflicts of interest Guidelines for avoiding conflicts of interest for senior officials have been completed. 08.2020 12.2020 Developing good communication practices for officials when dealing with lobbyists Good communication practice for officials when dealing with lobbyists is ready. 08.2020 12.2020 Training officials to take into account the good communication practice when dealing with lobbyists Training material is ready. 01.2021 12.2021 Implementation of the concept of disclosure of meetings with lobbyists and an analysis of technical solutions (including possible links with the cocreative environment, see activity 1.2) Meetings with interest groups will be made public in an up-to-date manner and in a way that is comprehensible to the public. 01.2021 06.2022

Action Plan Review

Commitment 3.1: Develop and implement guidelines for good practice in lobbying

• Verifiable: Yes

• Does it have an open government lens? Yes

• Potential for results: Modest

• This commitment has been un-clustered from Commitment 3 (Increasing the transparency of policy-making)

Results Report

Commitment 3.1. Develop and implement guidelines for good practice in lobbying

● Verifiable: Yes

● Does it have an open government lens? Yes

● This commitment has been un-clustered from Commitment 3 (Increase the transparency of policy-making)

● Potential for results: Modest

● Completion: Complete

● Did it open government? Major

Commitment 3.1: Develop and implement guidelines for good practice in lobbying (Ministry of Justice)

Context and Objectives:

This commitment aimed to improve public access to information on ministers’ and top-level public officials’ meetings with lobbyists. Specifically, it entailed developing guidelines for ministers and top public officials on transparent communication with lobbyists and introducing a government-wide practice of reporting lobby meetings to the public on a quarterly basis. Before the action plan, government agencies did not consistently share information on lobby meetings with the public, earning criticism from the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) for lack of rules governing ministers’ and top civil servants’ contacts with lobbyists. [59] Since the government lacked a common definition of lobbying, ministers and public officials missed guidance on what types of contacts they should record and publish.

Did It Open Government? Major

Because this commitment lacked legal force and mechanisms to drive institutional change, the IRM did not list it among the promising commitments in the Action Plan Review. [60] However, in practice, the commitment has demonstrated strong early results. Government institutions now regularly publish data on ministers’ and top officials’ meetings with lobbyists, which was not available to the public before. Civil society stakeholders frequently use the data to track what interest groups have influenced policy processes. [61] For example, the Network of Estonian Nonprofit Organizations (NENO) used the data to compile the 2021 CSO Sustainability Index report for Estonia ^[62] and the civil society manifesto for the 2023 general elections in Estonia. ^[63]

The commitment achieved all milestones on time. In March 2021, the government approved two documents: 1) guidelines for ministers and their political advisors for avoiding conflicts of interest, and 2) a code of good practice of communication with lobbyists, targeted to ministers and top administrative staff of central government institutions. To disseminate the guidelines and the good practice, the Ministry of Justice produced a training video and test questions, which were integrated with an anti-corruption e-learning course for public officials. [64] The training videos are available on YouTube. [65] An important provision is the requirement to publish quarterly data on ministers’ and top officials’ meetings with lobbyists. This information should include the name of the official, name and affiliations of the lobbyist, date of the meeting, and topics discussed. According to the good practice, government organizations should publish the data on their website and update it at least every quarter. The Ministry of Justice provided a simple template for presenting this information in a tabular format, which most organizations have followed. [66]

While government organizations are “strongly recommended” [67] to follow the good practice, it lacks legal force and foresees no sanctions for non-compliance. In 2021 and 2022, the Ministry of Justice and Transparency International (TI) Estonia analyzed government institutions’ practices of publishing information on meetings with lobbyists. [68] They found that most organizations voluntarily follow the recommendations and publish overviews of lobby meetings once every quarter. [69] They also noted improvements in the quality of the information over the 18-month period assessed. In the beginning, the overviews sometimes lacked data on lobbyists’ affiliations or presented inadequate information on the topics discussed at meetings. However, the Ministry of Justice’s most recent assessment shows that several organizations have improved the quality of their lobbying data. [70]

According to a representative from the Ministry of Justice, their assessment indicates that the good practice works well even without a legal obligation. [71] The representative noted that the most challenging part of implementation was coming to an agreement at the political and administrative level on the scope and format of regulating communication with lobbyists. However, this preparatory process largely took place before the start of the action plan and once an agreement was reached, implementation has been smooth. The representative also believed that implementation was successful because of the ministry’s close collaboration with the government’s corruption prevention network. This network involves points of contact from all government ministries and the Government Office (usually internal auditors, sometimes also middle managers, and advisers), and representatives of partners such as the National Audit Office, TI Estonia, or Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

At the same time, there are still gaps in politicians’ awareness of the guidelines for avoiding conflicts of interest. The public controversy that arose in July 2022 when the former head of the Trade Unions Confederation was appointed Minister of Health and Labor demonstrated that many members of the government were not familiar with the guidelines’ definition of a ‘lobbyist’. [72] TI Estonia points to the need for more systematic dissemination efforts to ensure ministers’ and officials’ high awareness of the guidelines and the good practice. [73]

To encourage organizations to continue the good practice, the Ministry of Justice and TI Estonia selected the top 10 performers in December 2022 based on the adequacy, timeliness, accessibility, and machine-readability of lobbying information, as well as organizations’ responsiveness to requests for additional details. [74] The Ministry of Social Affairs, Ministry of Rural Affairs and Ministry of Education and Research ranked in the top three. [75] The Ministry of Justice plans to continue the assessment of publication practices and recognize top publishers next year.

Looking Ahead:

A key debate is whether Estonia needs a mandatory lobby register or if transparency can be achieved through voluntary mechanisms. CSOs such as TI Estonia have advocated for the adoption of a lobby register, while the Ministry of Justice has deemed it more feasible to start with voluntary measures. [76] The introduction of a mandatory lobby registration system would require an information system to host the data, new legislation, and strong oversight and sanctioning mechanisms. The Ministry of Justice notes that putting an obligatory registration system in place where lobbyists would be required to register themselves needs a political decision and a cost-benefit analysis. [77] Therefore, if the current voluntary reporting system continues to produce good results, the ministry would not aim to adopt stricter lobbying regulations in the near future. As lobbying transparency has significantly improved thanks to this good practice, TI Estonia no longer deems it necessary to take immediate steps toward a mandatory lobby register. However, this need may reemerge if the public sector fails to comply with the good practice and expand it to cover more institutions. [78]

As the next step, the ministry is encouraging government organizations to publish quarterly overviews in machine-readable data formats. The IRM recommends aggregating this data to the national open data portal to assist public monitoring. In collaboration with TI Estonia, the ministry is continuing to analyze organizations’ data publication and highlight best practices. In the coming years, the government plans to start publishing part of lobbying data in the new legislative drafting and co-creation system, being developed over several OGP action plans. According to the vision, each legislative and policy draft listed in the system would include data on meetings with interest groups that participated in its development. This would improve public oversight of government communication with lobbyists since the current quarterly reports only apply to ministers and top officials, whereas it is often lower-level officials that liaise with interest groups in relation to specific policy drafts. [79]

TI Estonia stresses that government institutions should not stop at simply publishing lobbying data but use the data to critically analyze their public engagement and work toward a more balanced representation of private and civil society interests in decision-making. [80] The government could also periodically review and update the good practice to address any changes in the context or implementation practice. For example, lobbying data could be published as soon as technically practicable, possibly every week instead of every quarter. Regarding the broader issue of avoiding conflicts of interest, TI Estonia recommends the government to address current contradictions in the good practice and the Government of the Republic Act. [81] The good practice foresees a cooling-off period of one year during which ministers leaving office are not allowed to take up management positions in companies and NGOs over which they have exercised power as ministers, while the law only stipulates a cooling-off period of six months, and excludes non-profits. The government could amend the law according to the higher standards of the good practice.

In parallel, the Ministry of Justice is encouraging the Parliament to start publishing lobbying data. TI Estonia has stressed the need to expand lobbying transparency mechanisms to Members of the Parliament and local governments. [82] As the executive government has no mandate to impose policies on the Parliament, the ministry has called on the Parliament to develop its own transparency regulations. As a first step, the ministry has recommended the Parliament’s anti-corruption select committee to disclose data on its meetings with lobbyists to set an example to other Parliamentary committees. [83] The new Parliament formed after the elections in March 2023 could take up this topic.