On January 30, 2014, the UK Parliament adopted the “Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014.”  Covington today issued a client advisory explaining the new law, which imposes mandatory registration and disclosure requirements on certain organizations that lobby in the UK.  Significantly, however, unlike in the United States, the new UK law does not require registration by corporations whose main business is not lobbying, even if these corporations undertake limited lobbying activities.  Generally, the United States has much more rigorous lobbying disclosure rules than do most other countries.  The new UK law, which is fairly narrow in scope, reflects a trend of somewhat greater attention to lobbying disclosure overseas, however.  There have been proposals for the EU to adopt a similar mandatory lobbyist registry for lobbying in Brussels.  We will continue to track these global lobbying compliance developments for clients.