Influence Peddling, a Controversial Crime Applicable to an Obsolete Criminal Policy

I have deliberately used the archaism “obsolete†to highlight the very expired, outdated and outmoded character of the notion of the crime of influence peddling. Since the crime of influence peddling belongs to the category of corruption crimes, our approach should not be misinterpreted, i.e., in the sense of potentializing this phenomenon that we consider cancerous for a democratic society, but in the sense of updating and progressing Romanian criminal policy relative to this crime. The establishment of a “legislative footprint†, defined as “a comprehensive public register of the influence of lobbyists on a normative act†, would be an effective way to reduce the risk of inappropriate influence and, at the same time, to increase the transparency of the adaptation process of policies within the EU, as revealed in a document issued by Transparency International (Berg and Freund 2015, 4). The present scientific-legal approach is likely to adapt, through a new proposed meaning, the notion of influence peddling crime to the objective reality of current criminal policies and respect for the fundamental freedoms of citizens according to the rules of the European Union and to overcome the obscurity of the elements constitutive of this crime.