• Revising the Lobbying Law
  

  The amendment process will be an opportunity to remove the defects from a potentially progressive law.

  — By Don Shapiro

• Introducing Regulations on Organic Products
  

  Importers were given little time and insufficient information to adjust to proposed new rules.

  — By  Zoe Hoe and Don Shapiro

Revising the Lobbying Law

The amendment process will be an opportunity to remove the defects from a potentially progressive law.

The headline over the Editorial in the September 2008 issue of Taiwan Business TOPICS was “Rethink the Lobbying Law.” That was just one month after the new legislation had come into effect, a year after its passage by the Legislative Yuan, and already a number of problems had become evident.

Fundamentally the law was a positive, reform-minded measure aimed at curbing lobbying-related abuses. But it was drafted and enacted in haste, without careful deliberation. As a result, much of the content is too vague, leading to unnecessary confusion, and certain requirements are overly complicated, making compliance onerous. Most importantly, the scope of the law is too broad, potentially impinging on the democratic rights of civic organizations who should not be among the targets of such legislation.  

Some of those shortcomings have also been apparent to individual lawmakers and to the Ministry of the Interior, the government agency in charge of implementing the law. The Ministry is therefore soliciting suggestions from interested parties as a first step in preparing an amendment to improve the statute. AmCham has been collaborating with the law firm Baker & McKenzie to put forward its suggestions.

The major changes the Chamber plans to propose include:

• Adding clearer definitions of who is a “lobbyist,” who is a “lobbied party,” and precisely what constitutes lobbying activities.
• Exempting charitable and religious organizations, as well as groups organized under the Civic Associations Law, from coming under the provisions of the Lobbying Law. The time and cost of complying with the Lobbying Law’s currently burdensome administrative requirements could have a chilling effect on these not-for-profit groups, which have limited personnel and sources of funds.
• Further narrowing the scope of the law to clearly target those primarily or heavily engaged in lobbying, such as professional lobbying firms or individual professional lobbyists. Only if their lobbying efforts exceed a threshold of 20% of their total activities should the law apply to individuals or groups who are not full-time lobbyists (the law calls them “special-purpose lobbyists”).
• Removing the meaningless restriction that a special-purpose lobbyist may name no more than 10 representatives to lobby on its behalf.
• Permitting Taiwan branches of foreign companies and other “foreign legal persons” as defined in the Company Law to make contact with government officials without running the risk of being deemed to be engaging in illegal lobbying. Currently subsidiaries but not branches are allowed to lobby. 
• Creating a centralized office, perhaps in the Ministry of the Interior, to handle lobbying registrations. In the existing law, each ministry or department manages its own registrations, leading to inconsistencies and lack of expertise. It would also be more efficient if registrations were done just once per “client,” instead of the current system of registering each topic or “case” to be lobbied.
• Including legislative aides, as well as the legislators themselves, under the coverage of the law.

These and other prospective revisions would reduce the administrative burden on both government agencies and the lobbying organizations, while providing even more effective safeguards against abuses. “The Ministry of the Interior is to be commended for its proactive attitude in seeking to improve the law,” says AmCham President Andrea W. Wu. “The Chamber plans to cooperate fully in this effort, and we hope that lawmakers also takes this matter seriously when the amendment eventually comes up in the Legislative Yuan.”

 — By Don Shapiro

Introducing Regulations on Organic Products

Importers were given little time and insufficient information to adjust to proposed new rules.

In light of the growing popularity of organic foods in this market, the Taiwan government is putting in place a regulatory framework for such products for the guidance and protection of consumers. But AmCham Taipei’s Retail Committee has found that the process of implementing those regulations has been anything but smooth.

Following promulgation of a new “Agricultural Production and Certification Act” in January 2007, it became the duty of the Council of Agriculture (COA) to prepare a set of detailed regulations to come into force on January 29, 2009 after a two-year grace period. But those regulations, which define the certification process for organic products and the content of the labeling to appear on the package, were not completed and communicated to industry until close to the deadline. When the COA’s Agriculture and Food Agency (AFA) conducted a series of seminars for industry representatives last December in major cities around the island to brief them on the new system, many implementation details still remained unclear. Which foreign accreditation institutions, for example, would be recognized as qualified to certify that products are indeed organic? That list was not posted on the AFA web page until February 20.

Another question – can products already imported before January 29 remain on the shelves after that deadline – got a quicker response. The COA announced on January 22 that all organic items produced before January 31 will be exempted from the new labeling requirement until July 31. Products originating after that date must fully comply with the new import, certification, and labeling regulations. That flexibility, not initially considered by the regulator, reflects the need for multinational companies to have sufficient lead time in their supply chain and compliance system to respond to new requirements.

Further, the new regulations state that to be marketed as “organic,” imported agricultural products – whether raw or processed – must be sourced only from countries whose organic food standards have been officially accepted by the COA in a process called “equivalence.” In mid-January, the COA announced that it accorded such status to Australia, Austria, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. But Taiwan and the United States are still working on reconciling some differences in their approaches; the U.S. system, for instance, allows processed foods to be labeled organic if 70% of the ingredients are organic agricultural products, but in Taiwan the threshold is 95%. Another example is that the two systems have different standards regarding trace levels of banned ingredients.

Eventually Taiwan should have an effective system for regulating organic products to safeguard the public interest, but earlier consultation with industry members would have saved time and trouble.

 — By  Zoe Hoe and Don Shapiro