AUSTRIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Michael Rohregger, Rohregger Rechtsanwälte
• be recorded in the “Lobbying and Interest Representation Register” (Register); • submit to certain obligations of conduct, such as: (a) the duty to register; (b) duties to provide information (including identity, task, concern, duty to tell the truth, for lobbying companies: the ex - pected fee); (c) prohibitions (claiming a non-existing commissioned or consulting relationship with a functionary, unfair procurement of information, unfair and inappropriate exer - tion of pressure); and (d) the code of conduct (it should be noted that the code of conduct of the Austrian Lobbying Act is very general and contains a large number of undefined legal terms, which complicates the implementation of the law); and • be aware of sanctions (administrative penal - ties of up to EUR20,000, or up to EUR60,000 for a repeated offence) and other legal con - sequences (deletion from the list, nullity of contracts) for non-compliance. The scope of application of the Lobby Act con - cerns activities that are directly aimed at influ - encing certain decision-making processes in the legislation and enforcement of the federal, provincial government, municipalities and the associations of municipalities. The Austrian Lobbying Act contains a number of legal definitions, as follows. • “Lobbying activity” means any organised, structured and direct contact with officials for the purpose of influencing certain decision- making processes in legislation or enforce - ment, private-sector administration of the
federal government, the provinces, munici - palities and municipal associations. • The “lobbying mission” is a contract against payment that obliges a contractor to carry out lobbying activities. • A “lobbyist” is a person who carries out lobbying activities as a body, employee or contractor of a lobbying company or whose duties include this. • The “lobbying firm” is a company whose business purpose includes the acceptance and performance of a lobbying assignment (with no permanency required). • A “corporate lobbyist” is an executive body or employee of a company whose duties include lobbying activities for this company, unless the duties are professional obligations defined by law. From a compliance perspective, two paragraphs are particularly relevant. • According to Section 6 of the Austrian Lobby - ing Act, which defines the principles of lobby - ing activities and representation of interests, lobbyists and interest-representatives are obliged: (a) to disclose their identity, their task and their specific concerns; (b) not to obtain information in an unfair manner; (c) to disclose information truthfully; (d) to inform themselves about, and comply with, activity restrictions and incompat - ibility rules; and (e) not to exert unfair or inappropriate pres - sure on functionaries. • Section 7 of the Austrian Lobbying Act requires lobbying companies or companies that employ corporate lobbyists to base their lobbying activities on a code of conduct,
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