The Deal Makers: Coalition Deal Shows Rising Clout of Lobbyists

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/lobbyists-had-major-role-in-shaping-german-coalition-deal-a-936643.html



As the dust settled in Berlin, one group came out of last week's coalition deal an unequivocal winner: Germany's lobbyists. When it comes to shaping policy, corporate interests are wielding ever more influence on national politics.

The Deal Makers: Coalition Deal Shows Rising Clout of Lobbyists
By SPIEGEL Staff
December 04, 2013 – 06:23 PM

Political lobbyists in Berlin have been keeping very busy in the past few weeks as coalition negotiations to form the next German government were reaching their climax. Now that the talks have finally concluded, negotiators report that they were more inundated than ever before.

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Although there are around 5,000 to 6,000 lobbyists based in the German capital, there is no reliable data on what groups wield influence where, or what amounts of money are involved. Unlike many countries in the European Union, Germany has no mandatory lobby registry and remains the only G-20 country other than Japan that has not signed the UN convention against parliamentary corruption.

Over the past weeks, the drafts of position papers made their way to the email in-boxes of Berlin lawmakers, and were promptly forwarded to lobbyists working for powerful corporations and other special interests. The lobbyists, in turn, used their smartphones, Facebook or Twitter accounts to voice their opinions, and in doing so made their imprint on the set of documents that became the coalition agreement between the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the conservatives.

Lobbyists for savings banks, for instance, were able to insert an inconspicuous sentence into the agreement that sounds commonplace, but is in fact a blanket clause against any serious reform: "We will adhere to the established three-pillar system of the German banking system, and will take its characteristics into account," the final document states.