Eduard Voytenko Initiated Lobbying Market Regulation at GR Force 2018

For the second year in a row, the GR FORCE Professional Forum (2018) gathers specialists in relations with public authorities and lobbyists. Its aim is experience exchange and discussing effective lobbying and GR cases. This year the event was attended by the representatives of the lobbying market from the Republic of Kazakhstan, Ukraine and the Republic of Belarus.

Eduard Voytenko took part in the discussion "Development of the GR Community in Russia". In his speech, he raised the topic of lobbying regulation in Russia and said that it was necessary to formulate clear "rules of the game" for lobbyists and GR specialists. Correct state regulation (or industry self-regulation) will open the lobbying market and contribute to the growth of competitiveness among market players, which in turn will increase its transparency. Moreover, the financial capacity of the market will grow, due to, among others, international corporations, which, for example, will be able to allocate full GR-budgets for their offices in Russia which would include lobbying services. These foreign corporations and companies, in most cases, today can’t afford to allocate large amounts of financial resources for lobbying activity, because it isn’t regulated.

At the same time, the state and GR-community are still not ready for this state of affairs. Today, lobbyists are mainly governed by indirect federal laws. And there are still no ready-made solutions for "legalizing" lobbyism. Previous attempts to regulate the industry are nothing more than a formal approach to business.