Summary
The German Lobbyregister is the public lobbyist register operated by the German Bundestag under the Lobbying Register Act (LobbyRG), in force from January 2022 (with the 2024 amendment extending disclosure to all meetings with members of parliament and parliamentary staff). The Register is the primary data source for German lobbying-investigation work.
Body
The Register records every natural or legal person seeking to influence the German Bundestag or federal-government decisions: registrant declares scope, financial figures, funding sources (including third-country funding), and disclosure of all meetings with parliamentary actors. Registration is legally required to enter Bundestag premises; the 2024 amendment extended the disclosure perimeter to MP and parliamentary-staff interactions. [source: german-lobby-register]
The Register’s public interface exposes search filters by sector, by registrant type (interest representative, public-affairs firm, lobby network), and by financial volume. Investigative journalists and civil-society researchers use the Register to reverse-engineer lobbyist networks and trace funding flows. [source: german-lobby-register]
The Register’s main methodological limitation is that it relies on self-declaration of activity and financial figures; the audit and verification mechanisms are limited. The Register is a necessary but insufficient tool for full lobbying transparency. [source: german-lobby-register]
Use it for
Tracing a specific registrant’s declared activities or funding sources for an investigative project; downloading Register data to map a sector’s lobbying footprint in Germany; arguing for further reform by demonstrating what the Register catches and what it misses.