New separation of powers: time for reorganization of power

Since the 1970 years - in Austria since the middle of the 1980 years - the credo of economic policy has been "deregulation and privatization". It seemed a panacea for boosting the productivity of state-owned enterprises. In almost all sectors of the economy, a withdrawal of state regulation was demanded.

The (world) rule of the financial markets

According to Stefan Schulmeister, economist at wifo, deregulation of the financial markets was probably the strongest: "While in the 1950ER and 1960er years almost full employment prevailed, there was little youth unemployment or precarious employment, today millions of young people are without work and even with people stable employment is due to the futile search for affordable housing. "He attributes these developments to a considerable degree to the liberalization of the financial sector and, as a consequence, the advance of financial capitalism. The associated volatile exchange rates, commodity prices, stock prices and interest rates open the door to speculators for financial-technical poker rounds. That's how they created their own guild of investment bankers, who have an excellent ability to speculate against currencies, staples or whole states, and at the click of a mouse move the 67 of global GDP. Corporate profit-making thus shifted from the real to the financial sector, which reduced real investment - as less lucrative - as job creation did.

"Culture and science can only unleash their potential and provide the necessary innovative impulses if their driving forces are not fed by the commercial interests or the changing power interests of politics."
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) regarding separation of powers

Policy of interest versus lobbying

Basically, it should be noted here that advocacy and politics are both legitimate and desirable in a pluralistic society. They have a stabilizing effect because they create a balance of interests between different groups in society. Last but not least, interest policy is also enshrined in law and is legally protected, for example, by freedom of assembly, association and expression. Supporters of a liberal view of society even assume that it is the competition of individual interests that creates the common good and that the future viability of a democratic community is measured by the diversity and influence of its organized interests. But while associations, chambers and unions express themselves in public, lobbyists often act in secrecy.
Critics, like that Corporate Europe Observatory, a Dutch non-profit organization seeking alternatives to power concentration in corporations, accuses lobbyists of exacerbating social inequality and destroying the environment. They demand that economic lobbies be pushed back to tackle global problems such as poverty, climate change, social injustice, hunger and environmental degradation.
The Austrians are more likely to belong to the second group. According to the Austrian lobbying report 2013 45 percent of the population associate lobbying with bribery, intervention, collusion, courtesy and influence on politicians. The report makes it clear that small and medium-sized enterprises, NGOs and clubs have clearly lost influence in the fight of lobbies towards corporations, the international financial sector, but also towards their own government in recent years.
But where is the border between legitimate and illegitimate advocacy? This limit is probably less in the pursuit of individual and special interests themselves than in the means by which they are pursued. The repertoire of the lobbyists ranges from press conferences, information campaigns, demonstrations to the feeding of deputies and government members, patronage, blackmail and corruption. So-called public interest groups know how to camouflage individual interests as public interest interests.
Against extreme, illegal forms of lobbying there is the penal system. The problem of lobbying - apart from its difficult judicial traceability - is above all the gray area between legal, but illegitimate, hidden practices.
In general, more transparency is seen as a recipe against illegitimate interest policy. This includes the disclosure of interest and economic relations between public officials and companies or associations, the disclosure of their ancillary activities and income or the mandatory entry in a lobby register. Often, waiting periods for outgoing political office holders are demanded in order to counteract the allocation of posts to influential politicians.

Separation of powers (separation of powers in Switzerland and Austria) is the distribution of state power over several state organs for the purpose of limiting power and securing freedom and equality. According to the historical model of the separation of powers, the three powers of the legislative, executive and judicial branches are usually meant.

Transparency - yes, but

In Austria is on 1. On January 1, 2013 entered into force a new lobbying law that obliges lobbying companies and companies employing in-house lobbyists to register and submit to a code of conduct. In addition to the company and employee data, the client and the agreed scope of responsibility must also be specified for each lobbying order. The only flaw: This part of the lobby register is not visible to the public.
Currently, 64 agencies with 150 registered lobbyists and 106 companies with 619 in-house lobbyists appear on the Austrian lobbying register.
Criticism of the new Lobbyingregister comes among other things from the Austrian Public Affairs Association (ÖPAV) itself - that is the lobby of the lobbyists. The association president Feri Thierry criticizes it above all the unclear wording of the law as well as the fact that the law missed its goal to give an overview over all lobbyists and interest representatives in Austria, clearly: "we estimate that it in Austria about 2.500 full-time Stakeholders exist. The vast majority of them are not covered by the registration requirement ".

"Maybe this horse should be teased from the other side: Public bodies should disclose their contacts with lobbyists."
Marion Breitschopf, meineabgeordneten.at, regarding new separation of powers.

Marion Breitschopf from the Austrian platform meineabgeordneten.at, a transparency database for politicians, also notes that it would be important for Austria that in fact all lobbyists, including interest groups, lawyers and NGOs, appear in the register. It is difficult to disclose the individual orders or clients from the service provider side: "Maybe this horse should be petted from the other side: Public authorities should disclose their contacts to lobbyists. A step in this direction would be the 'legislative footprint', which is a legal text document format that shows which parts of the text come from where. "

Separation of powers: The lobbying industry in Brussels

At European level, one often hears of a whole lobbying industry that has established itself in Brussels. In fact, 2011 has registered 6.500 lobbying institutions in XNUMX's - not to mention voluntary - transparency registers of the European institutions. Transparency International estimates their number on 12.000.
EU institutions are indeed a welcome target for lobbyists. Alone in the preparatory phase of the Data Retention Directive, the European Commission received proposals for amendments through 3.000. Some of 70's can be viewed on the European platform lobbyplag.eu and literal matches with the directive can be queried with a mouse click. An insightful exercise.
The expert groups of the European Commission are also a particular problem. A report published in November 2013 gives a deep insight into the work of the European Commission. Thus, in Brussels, it is indeed common practice for financial sector representatives to advise the Commission on financial market regulation, telecommunications companies on data protection, beer companies on alcohol policy and oil companies on climate change issues.
The report reveals, for example, that the TAXUD TAXUD expert groups are composed of 80 percent corporate representatives, and only three percent SME representatives and one percent trade union representatives.
There is therefore a raging war between lobby critics and supporters between the European Commission and the European Parliament. In November, critical MEPs froze 2011's budget for these expert groups and called on the Commission to ensure four principles when using expert groups: no corporate dominance, no lobbyists as independent consultants, open invitations to participate and full transparency. The balance sheet released in the following year was extremely bad.

Corruption as an extreme form

The Austrian Federal Government has received a very positive testimonial in the first report on corruption by the European Commission for its "clear efforts to combat corruption". For example, the report rates the legal changes of recent years (for example, the 2012 Party Law, the 2012 Corruption Act, the 2013 Lobby Act) and the work of the Economic and Corruption Prosecutor's Office (WKStA) and the Federal Office for Combating Corruption (BAK) as very positive. Likewise, the Code of Conduct for all Austrian officials, "The responsibility lies with me", as well as Austria's commitment to the international arena, is given positive mention, such as the active support in founding the International Corruption Academy IACA.
The European Commission sees a need for action in the fact that the Austrian corruption supporters of the WKStA and the BAK are subject to the instructions of the Minister of Justice, they have little opportunity to obtain financial information - keyword banking secrecy - as well as the fact that reports on additional income of government officials and senior ministry officials no review and therefore false information is not subject to sanction.
Without belittling these criticisms, the report is nevertheless in clear contradiction to public opinion in the country. After all, according to the last Eurobarometer survey from the year 2013 66 percent of Austrians think that corruption is widespread in their country. Although the EU average for this assessment is 76 percent, the result is still worrying. The same survey also found that Austria is the only country in the EU where a relatively high proportion of the population - almost a third - thinks it is legitimate to do a favor or service to an official in return for a public service to give a gift.

Separation of powers: media diversity against opinion simplicity

In the meantime, the media are also following the laws of the market and, as a consequence, the pattern of overall economic concentration processes. With regard to media concentration, however, Austria is an international special case. In no other European country is the diversity of daily newspapers as low as in Austria. While in this country a total of about 17 daily newspapers are on the market, the six most important ones already cover the majority - namely 93 percent - of the readership. The fact that these six daily newspapers come from only three publishing houses - Mediaprint (Krone, Kurier), Styria (Kleine Zeitung, Die Presse, Wirtschaftsblatt) and Fellner Medien GmbH (Austria) - is somewhat shameful in terms of democracy policy.

"In order for citizens to form public opinion, a great deal of independent public opinion is needed."
Wolfgang Hasenhütl, Initiative Conservation Media and Publishing Diversity

Opinion diversity can hardly be said in view of these circumstances. Out of concern for the diversity of media and opinion in Austria, the publisher Wolfgang Hasenhütl formed the initiative for the preservation of media and publishing diversity in Austria in the year 2012. "We are of the opinion that Austria is doing a great deal of democracy-political harm with this unification of opinions. In order for citizens to be able to form a public opinion, a great deal of independent public opinion is needed, "said Hasenhütl, spokesman for the initiative.
At European level, European Alternatives, a pan-European association for active citizenship, and the Alliance Internationale de Journalistes have adopted the theme and have been working to form a network since 2010 European Initiative for Media Pluralism (EIMP). It brings together organizations, media and professional associations from across Europe with the immediate goal of promoting a European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) calling for the establishment of an EU directive on media pluralism. To be able to submit a proposal for an EU Directive to the European Commission and thus start a legislative process, the initiative still needs 860.000 signatures.

Another core problem of the media landscape is the high economic dependence of publishers on advertising sales. Since the sale of print media, as well as any press funding, accounts for only a small fraction of the actual costs, the economic dependence on the sale of advertising is immense. The undesirable side effects include obscured sources or the fact that reporting is too often only based on economic interests and dependencies. In this way, published opinion is increasingly sold as public opinion. At the same time, companies and business associations have been hounding journalists with press trips, test cars or cooperation offers. The list of favors is long and carries a clear risk of conflict of interest. The borderline between PR and journalism is becoming increasingly unclear.
The importance of the media for the functioning of a democracy is hard to underestimate. Control over the activities of state bodies, for example, is one of their most important tasks. However, they also play a central role in shaping political opinion by making the different positions of different social groups transparent and verifying their credibility. They create publicity and are themselves carriers of public opinion.
As a result, media are too often taken by the policy. "Austrian ministers use the advertising budgets of their ministries in the election campaign to promote their achievements, to polish their image and to gain an advantage over the political competition," said the association for the promotion of investigative and data journalism. The advertising budgets of the ministries, federal states, public companies and institutions amount to more than 200 million euros per year. In addition, the total press release of 10,8 millions, which was distributed in 2013, is relatively modest.
In Germany, the Federal Constitutional Court calls this practice "inadmissible campaign advertising", among other things, as advertising spending in election years traditionally massively increases and thus a sparing, efficient and economic use of public funds is hardly justified.

The dependence relationship between politics and the media is also aggravated by the fact that in Austria the head of government has the primary responsibility for the media. "This environment of influence of the so-called fourth power can not be found in such a form in any other country in Europe to such a high intensity. Usually, the media department is located in the ministries of culture, "said Wolfgang Hasenhütl, spokesman for the Initiative for the Preservation of Media and Publishing Diversity. It is no coincidence that the initiative's central demand is a broad-based, economically independent and non-interlinked media landscape that counteracts the current interdependence of the press and politics and is in keeping with modern democracy.
All these developments call for a new separation of powers, a reorganization and unbundling of relations between politics, business and the media. However, concern about the supremacy of the economy over society and politics is a very, very old one. The primacy of economics is a phenomenon that has already made gray thinkers like Montesquieu, Karl Marx, Karl Polanyi and Carl Amery grow.

Photo / Video: Shutterstock, Option media.