Spain could see between 800 and 1,500 million euros of pending European funds cut if it fails to validate the lobby decree-law in Congress next Wednesday. While diverse positions emerge in the business environment, the Government still lacks the necessary votes to pass the vote. Ibex companies, the CEOE, and the unions try to sink it, but groups dedicated to lobbying bet that Spain will have, after six years of debate, a regulation governing their activity.
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The criticism of the decree-law urgently approved by the Government complicates the vote and, therefore, Spain’s ability to include this reform in the request for payment of the seventh tranche of the Recovery Plan for 26 billion. The Ministry of Economy plans to send the documentation to Brussels at the end of this month. The deadline to approve the agreed reforms ended on August 31.
The Ibex, the CEOE, and the unions reject the new registry, but lobbying professionals support it
Payment cancellations for failing to comply with what was agreed with Brussels are set in a methodology by the Commission itself. The amount is calculated by dividing Spain’s maximum financial contribution, over 160 billion, by the number of milestones and objectives, 595. Then a series of coefficients and adjustments are applied, both upwards and downwards. The Commission itself reserves a subjective assessment of the reform. With this methodology, sources estimate the possible damage to Spain at up to 1,500 million.
Brussels has issued five recommendations to Spain regarding lobbies in recent years. In 2022, it recommended continuing efforts to adopt legislation that included a mandatory public register of lobbyists. The Government approved the draft lobby law that same year and submitted it for public consultation.
In 2023, the Commission maintained the recommendation and, a year later, repeated it with greater emphasis. The Parliament had been dissolved due to the election call and the regulation had lapsed. In 2025, the Rule of Law Report returned to the issue. The last warning came in June.
Despite these requests, Brussels’ warnings are not found in the specific recommendations to the country in the European Semester, but are included in the Annual Rule of Law Report, an instance that could be said to be of lower rank.
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Junts is set to vote against the validation of the decree-law while the PP will not set its position until next week, although for now the option to reject it is gaining weight. Meanwhile, Foment del Treball has conveyed that the regulation generates more bureaucracy and hinders small companies’ access to dialogue with the Government, which may contribute to conditioning Junts’ vote against it.
The Catalan party indeed demands differentiating the professional lobbying activity from contacts with politicians that small sectoral organizations or modest professional groups might have. That is, it demands that the mandatory register only affect those professionally dedicated to lobbying activity. Additionally, Junts has long been demanding the Government introduce measures involving European funds at stake, without having received a response to its claims from the Government so far. For example, it has proposed lowering the VAT on sports or ending temporality in the public function, without success.
In the case of the PP, the Government has included some of its amendments in the decree-law. One of them is that the authority managing the new mandatory register be the independent Transparency Council and not the Office of Conflicts of Interest, attached to the Ministry for Digital Transformation. Another measure is that there be interoperability with regional registers, such as those of Catalonia, Valencia, or Madrid.
The CEOE and the unions are also critical of the regulation, considering that including social agents in such a register could harm their role as interlocutors with the Government, recognized in the Constitution.
Meanwhile, Spain’s main lobbying association, APRI, expresses its “deep dissatisfaction with the inability of political groups to approve a regulation that would bring transparency to public-private relations as happens in Brussels.” It provides a document to demonstrate that the decree-law incorporates a large number of amendments from the PP, Sumar, ERC, PNV, EH Bildu, Junts, and BNG. 85% of the regulation has the “footprint of previous parliamentary work,” it states.
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