Is the expression 'ethical lobbyist' a contradiction in terms?

Some five years ago, Jana Marco, who has worked for years as a parliamentary lobbyist (postman would be a more accurate description) for Martin Roman and Mirek Topolanek, asked me if I would support her initiative to set up an industry association to promote the common interests of local lobbying firms.

I would. At least I would have before she told me that the planned association would happily accept New Deal Communications as a member. New Deal, you will recall, was the lobbying firm owned by Mirek Topolanek’s business partner, Marek Dalik.

Don’t misunderstand me. It is not that I believe that there is any substantive difference between Dalik’s working methods and Marco’s. What I objected to was Marco’s arrogance in thinking there was no need to pretend there was a difference. Or perhaps she really believed that Dalik would have made a good ambassador for the new association, in which case she is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Or perhaps, given that it is Topolanek and Roman who have been buttering her bread for so long, she had no choice in the matter?

Whatever her motive, I had no intention of lending my company's name to an industry association that welcomed members like Dalik: Marco herself would have been hard enough to swallow.

The association was eventually launched last November under the name of APAA. Three weeks earlier, Dalik had been hauled out of a Prague restaurant in the early hours and jailed for a day or two on a charge, later dropped, of attempted fraud. This little hiccup with the law might explain why New Deal is not among the members of the association. And there again, it might not.

A much more likely explanation for the fact that Dalik's New Deal never joined APAA is that Dalik couldn’t give a damn about being, or even appearing to be, ethical – unlike the six members of APAA.

According to its website, “APAA seeks transparency and openness in the provision of public affairs services, by means of the registration of its members and the exercise of supervision over their compliance with our Ethical Code.”

The world is full of overblown ethical codes stuffed with pretty sentiments. Indeed, the ethical code has become an essential corporate accessory. And like any fashionable accessory, it is often just as disposable. We must suppose that APAA's ambition to be both transparent and open is a token of true commitment.

However, let us not be too quick to judge. On paper, APAA’s ethical code is impeccable, banning bribes, bad manners and many other nasty things besides. But as with all self-regulating commercial entities, it is the enforcement of the code that counts.

In an attempt to test the robustness of the code, and to clarify how exactly members hold each other to account, I sent APAA’s chairman, Vaclav Nekvapil, some questions about the disclosure requirements it imposes upon its members – or better said, that members impose each other.

I assume that some level of disclosure must be part of the registration of new members, for how else would members exercise supervision over each others’ compliance with all those worthy purposes? Or is compliance with APAA’s ethical code the same as operating within the law, in which case why bother with an ethical code? Is APAA just a public relations exercise? (Yes).

Does APAA oblige its members to disclose the commercial interests they represent before a conflict emerges? Does the ruling body of the association (which is made up of its six members) know if any member is currently under contract, or has been under contract in the recent past, to any public institution or company in which the state holds a majority stake?

Do members impose upon each other an obligation to disclose the beneficial owners of other member companies as a condition of membership, and if not, how is it possible to determine whether a criminal conflict of interest has occurred? Are members obliged to inform each other of any financial relationship with former government officials?

I will let you know the answers – if I receive any. We shall then be in a better position to judge whether six local lobbying firms are capable of enforcing an ethical code upon each other, let alone upon the clients and public officials with whom they work.