Lobbyists target ‘black sheep’ lawyers

Public affairs pros wage a war over disclosure.

A turf war between the two most influential professional groups in Brussels, lawyers and lobbyists, is escalating ahead of a key decision by the European Commission that could change the way both sides do business.

The question now is whether the lobbyists will get what they have been lobbying for: a U.S.-style reform which would force lawyers who lobby to give up the right to keep their clients confidential.

The Commission is expected to announce within weeks a public consultation into how it should tighten disclosure rules under its ambitious transparency regime, which was a central plank of the 2014 election campaign of President Jean-Claude Juncker.

Lobbyists who want to meet with senior Commission officials must disclose their clients on the Transparency Register, a database of lobbying interests which is administered jointly by the Commission and the European Parliament. Lawyers who lobby the EU institutions are not required to disclose their clients.

The chairman of a top lobbying association said these lawyers are unfairly sidestepping disclosure rules by claiming to protect attorney-client confidentiality, thus gaining an unfair advantage in the influence game.

“Lawyers absolutely need to register their clients when doing public affairs work,” said Karl Isaksson, head of the European Public Affairs Consultancies Association, a trade body that represents some of the biggest lobbying firms in Brussels. “I would hate to think that law firms are winning clients from us because they don’t have to disclose them.”

Lawyers have hit back at the lobbyists’ concerns, arguing their hands are tied on disclosure as a result of clear confidentiality rules in European bar associations. Any disclosure, they argue, would lead them to be disbarred.

“We clearly have a market advantage,” said one prominent lawyer who asked not to be named. The lawyer said while he would be happy to sign up to the Transparency Register, he is simply not allowed to do so.

In the United States, lawyers who are carrying out lobbying work are required to disclose the identity of their clients, although attorney-client confidentiality is maintained for work that is purely legal in nature.

However, members of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), which represents European lawyers, fear a similar arrangement in the EU could allow the Commission to punish lawyers carrying out legitimate legal work by classifying them as lobbyists and forcing them to disclose their activities.

Define lobbying

CCBE members who spoke to POLITICO said the U.S. disclosure model would not work in Brussels, where lawyers are members of 28 different professional associations, each of them with a different understanding of where legal work ends and lobbying begins. What’s more, unlike the U.S. federal government, the EU does not have the power to impose standards on national bar associations unless member states agree in the Council.

“The U.S. has a much clearer definition of what lobbying is,” said a CCBE official who asked not to be named. “If disclosure [for lobbying lawyers] becomes mandatory in Europe, we will need to talk about the definition of lobbying.”

The EU transparency regime’s exemption of lawyers is not, ultimately, in the best interests of lawyers themselves, argued Thomas Susman, the director of the American Bar Association’s Governmental Affairs Office.

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“I consider it to be best practice that lobbyists be required to disclose not just their clients but also the amount of money spent subject by subject,” said Susman, who recently addressed a conference on this issue in the European Parliament.

Some national bar associations around the EU are also responding to the concern. The French bar association has recently introduced new internal rules, requiring all lawyers affiliated with the association to declare their activities on the national transparency register and disclose their clients.

It is a trend which at least some Brussels lawyers who also work as lobbyists have welcomed.

“We would love to be forced to disclose our lobbying clients,” said Andreas Geiger, a founder of the government relations and law firm Alber & Geiger. Geiger said an obligation on all lawyers who do lobbying work to disclose their clients would create a level playing field and rid the industry of the “black sheep” who want to keep their lobbying work under wraps.

The Commission is working on new rules for an expanded transparency register that would include Parliament and the European Council, although it has so far not released a clear calendar for reform.

Lobbyists fear a simple extension of the Commission’s transparency regime to include the European Parliament and the European Council, in the form of an inter-institutional agreement, would leave the problem of unfair competition from lobbying lawyers unresolved.

Quentin Ariès contributed to this report.