Telos A&S with AmCham Italy on lobbying regulation
Telos A&S contributed to the writing of the Recommendation Report ‘The regulation of lobbying activities in Italy’ as a member of the Public Affairs Working Group of the American Chamber of Commerce in Italy. The document, which is the product of almost two years of work, was presented on 30 January in the Aldo Moro hall at the Chamber of Deputies.
AmCham Italy Managing Director, Simone Crolla, opened the meeting, while Vittorio Cino, the coordinator of the Working Group, illustrated the reasons which inspired the Report and briefly discussed some of the 10 recommendations included in the document. Telos cares especially about the Single National Register, transparency, and the guarantee of lobbyist participation in the legislative process. Needless to say, everything falls apart without penalties, which cannot but be considered as an indispensable building block.
A particularly interesting point raised by Prof. Clementi, a constitutionalist at the University of Perugia, concerned the central role of the State-Regions Conference. While it is not foreseen by Title V of the Constitution as amended in 2001, it has been in place since the 1980s and has effectively become the Coordination House which was not envisaged in the constitutional design. Therein important decisions are taken regardless of the distribution of legislative powers.
Then politics took centre stage: Alessandro Cattaneo (Forza Italia), Silvia Fregolent (Italia Viva), Ylenja Lucaselli (Fratelli d’Italia), and Francesco Silvestri (Movimento 5 Stelle) were all in agreement about the need to recognise the role of the lobbyist by means of an ad hoc law. Concluding remarks were delivered by Deputy Minister of Economy and Finance Antonio Misiani, who confirmed that interest representation should be understood as a necessary activity contributing to public decision-making.
Download the Report (in Italian) here.
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