The new rules created this week to discipline the actions of lobbyists in the federal administration allow for casual meetings with authorities subject to the regulations to be disclosed several days later than meetings previously scheduled through official channels.
According to the decree signed by President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday (9), these meetings can be registered seven consecutive days after they take place. Legislation prior to the decree allowed commitments of this type to be registered by the authorities within two business days.
The longer deadline could open a loophole for meetings outside the official agenda to be announced late, undermining the transparency goals that the new rules seek to achieve and hindering actions by representatives of conflicting interests in these situations, according to specialists.
Carolina Venuto, president of the Brazilian Association of Institutional and Governmental Relations, says that this risk exists, but considers the decree positive for increasing transparency in the government and standardizing the way in which information about meetings with lobbyists will be disclosed.
Valdir Simão, former minister of the CGU (Comptroller General of the Union), considers the time to be reasonable to deal with unforeseen situations and does not believe that it will be used to defraud the new rules, which make it mandatory to disclose detailed information about contacts of authorities with lobbyists.
The government decree also allows hearings whose secrecy “is essential for the safeguarding and security of society and the State” to be kept off the agenda, such as security and defense activities against cyber attacks, in addition to other secrecy cases provided for by law.
According to the decree, the new rules will only take effect on October 9, 2022, a week after the first round of the presidential election. The government has yet to develop a new system for publishing officials’ agendas and training officials to use it.
With Ricardo Balthazar (interim), Andressa Motter e Ana Paula Branco.
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