The Europeanization of lobbying: a meta-analysis of current practices

government; testifying before congressional committees; and formal legal action, such 
as and interference with administrative proceedings and litigation;
2. methods  by  which  groups  lobby  through  their  constituents;  for  this,  the 
professional  staff  act as intermediaries,  stimulating lobbying by citizens toward their 
government; they may ask all their members to write letters or to participate in protest 
demonstrations;  or  they  may  ask  individual,  but  highly  influential,  constituents  or 
members to contact a key policy maker;
3. groups may try to change governmental policy by influencing elections or altering 
public  opinion;  techniques  of  this  sort  contribute  money  to  political  campaigns, 
publishing voting records, releasing research results, and public relations campaigns2.
More  recently,  Guéguen  divided  lobbying  strategies  in  three  categories3,  already 
discussed in my former work on regulatory frameworks:
1. negative  strategies  consisting  of  a  face-on  opposition  to  Commission 
proposals or by proposing untenable counter-proposals; the farming lobbies provide the 
best illustration of these opposition strategies;
2. reactive  strategies  in  which  prudence  prevails  over  action  and  initiatives: 
monitoring, meetings and a small amount of public relations;
3. pro-active strategies consisting of working constructively with the Commission 
in a spirit of partnership and credibility.
4. Pro-active strategies are relatively rare, which is regrettable because the pro-
active lobbyist also offers the legislator an authorised and competent technical opinion 
and  credible  proposals.  Credibility  moreover  involves  companies’  and  industries’ 
capacities to build European alliances with ecologists and consumers.
According to Coen4, successful lobbying requires firms to have established at least 
four strategic capacities:
1. the ability to identify clear and focused policy goals;
2. develop relationships and credibility in the policy process;
3. understand the nature of the policy process and institutional access;
4. look for natural allies and alliances to develop profile and access.
2 Cited in McGrath, C. (2002), Comparative Lobbying Practices: Washington, London, Brussels, Draft paper, University of Ulster.
3
 Daniel Guéguen (2007), European Lobbying,  Europolitics, Brussels, p.51
4 Coen, D. (2002),  Business Interests and European Integration, in: Balme, R., Chabanet, D. and Wright, V. (eds):  L’action 
collective en Europe, Sciences Po Press, Paris, p. 261-267.
Modern government implies and foresees close co-operation with stakeholders from 
all  sectors of society,  normally aware of the actions and strategies they can use. 
Therefore, civic and producer interests contribute to the perception, presentation and 
definition of issues in European Union policy-making. 
European  Institutions  recognise  the  benefits  of  being  open  to  outside  input  and 
consultation mechanisms form part of their activities throughout the whole legislative 
process. There are already institutionalised advisory bodies established to assist the 
European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, namely 
the  Economic  and  Social  Committee  (ESC)  and  the  Committee  of  the  Regions 
(CoR). As the Commission stresses in one of its recent communications, “the role of  
these advisory bodies does not exclude direct contact between the Commission and  
interest  groups.  In  fact,  wide  consultation  is  one  of  the  Commission’s  duties  
according to the Treaties and helps to ensure that proposals put to the legislature are  
sound”5.  According  to  Protocol  n°  7  annexed  to  the  Amsterdam  Treaty,  on  the 
application  of  the  principles  of  subsidiarity  and  proportionality,  “the  Commission 
should [… ] consult widely before proposing legislation and, wherever appropriate,  
publish consultation documents6”.
Interest groups can be national, European and international federations covering all  
sectors of economic and social activity, law firms, public-affairs consultants, private 
enterprises and representatives of local or regional authorities. No consensus has yet 
emerged from the academic literature, which will be seen in details in 6.1, as to how 
this work can best be labelled. Numerous terms are used in everyday language to 
describe these organisations: interest groups, lobbies, pressure groups, promotion 
groups  and  so  on.  Each  of  these  terms refers  to  a  particular  aspect  of  interest  
representation. If lobbying essentially describes the direct advocacy of a point of view 
about a matter of public policy, it is less clear as a description of the actual work 
undertaken by most people in the lobbying industry. Still, one advantage of using the 
term “lobbyist” is that, even though it is often avoided in some countries or associated 
with the United States "pork barrel" system, it is broadly understood and the functions 
of the lobbyist are more clearly recognised than other terms such as "public affairs",  
"government relations" or "special interest groups".
5
 ‘General  principles and minimum standards for consultation  of interested parties by the Commission’ COM(2002)704,  11 
December 2002.
6
 Available on the internet on: http://www.eurotreaties.com/amsterdamprotocols.pdf
Such issues of definition are of more than academic interest. Indeed, as it will  be 
seen below, they were one of the major difficulties experienced during the laborious 
process of developing a European Parliament strategy towards lobbyists. It should 
also be mentioned that the term "lobbyist" still carries a rather negative meaning in a 
number of other Community languages (e.g., in German or Italian).
Since Brussels has turned into the key-centre of decision-making power (80 % of 
national legislation today is of European inspiration7), lobbies started to proliferate. 
Today the EU controls important policies such as the Common Agricultural Policy, the 
negotiations in the World Trade Organisation, telecommunication, public health, food 
safety, and transport. Over 1000 Committees and Expert Groups assist the European 
Commission  in  the  preparation,  adoption  and  enforcement  of  regulations  and 
directives. With about 1000 accredited journalists, Brussels has also become one the 
world's biggest press corps. In spite of media suspicion and criticism of lobbying, the 
media  themselves  are  becoming  increasingly  active  in  Brussels.  The  BBC,  for 
instance,  in  addition  to  its  newsgathering  team,  has  its  own  office  to  lobby  the 
European institutions. The print media have several representative bodies.
In parallel  with the extension of the European Parliament's legislative powers, the 
volume  and  intensity  of  efforts  to  lobby  it  have  significantly,  as  I’ve  previously 
anticipated, increased in the 1980s and 1990s. The most often quoted – although 
meanwhile somewhat outdated – source on the number of interest  groups at the 
European  level  is  a  Commission  report  published  in  1992.  In  this  report,  the 
Commission estimated that there were about 3000 interest groups (both national and 
European)  active  in  Brussels  and  Strasbourg,  employing  around  10.000  people, 
among which there were about  500 European and/or  international  federations.  In 
addition, it is generally agreed that there are more than 300 individual companies 
having  direct  representations  or  public  affairs  offices  in  Brussels.  About  100 
management  consultancies  and  numerous  law  firms  specialise  in  EU  decision 
making procedures and European law.
Although  the  Commission  has  recognised  that  its  1992  figures  were  probably 
exaggerated and based on rough assumptions, the general idea the communication 
has left is that there is a problem of "overcrowding" of the lobbying landscape and of  
information overload of MEPs. On the other hand, former MEP Ken Collins, probably 
7
 Guéguen, D.(2002),  Governance and the Role of Associations in Economic Management: A Response from an EU Public  
Affairs Practitioner, in: Greenwood, J. (ed.). The Effectiveness of EU Business Associations , Palgrave, Basingstoke, p. 47.
speaking for many of his colleagues, has stated that the major problem with lobbyists 
was quality and not quantity.
Indeed, unfocused and badly prepared efforts can be annoying, whereas competent 
and useful  information is  often welcome to  policy-makers.  Particularly  helpful  are 
comparative research and evidence that will enable decision makers to assess the 
impact of their proposal on the law and practices in each of the Member States.
It is, for this reason, important to understand the different types of interest groups and 
the characteristics of their collective action, their aim and their expectation, focusing 
on  business  interests,  especially  the  trade  associations  of  the  Information  and 
Communications Technology (ICT) sector, which has, for the past few years, been 
the main object of EU industrial policy (we’ll see that in 2.4). 
Actually,  there  are  hundreds  of  thousands  of  NGOs  and  other  more  or  less 
supporting or influencing interest groups across Europe. European NGO networks 
represent their national members and constituencies on a political level by lobbying 
political  actors on specific issues (for instance drafting policy,  press releases and 
position papers), by collecting information and channelling it between the national 
and EU levels, and by building their network’s ability to participate in the European 
process (e.g. training of national organisations on EU issues). That is, when there is 
a shared subject to be defended or sustained, it is more likely to gather supporters,  
information,  resources  at  the  national  level(s)  and  converge  all  the  efforts  to  a 
supranational level, in all likelihood under an umbrella organisation or network which 
speaks to the selected interlocutors with one voice.
That’s  why,  in  order  to  maximise  their  effectiveness,  many  national  actors  have 
organised themselves at a European level, establishing joint alliances. 
These new alliances can take different forms8:
• platforms of  stakeholders  built  around  a  common project  as  an alternative  to 
classical lobbying via a European association;
• transversal  alliances  going  from  producer  to  consumer  to  present  to  the 
Commission a  “ready-made consensus”.
In  these two cases,  the choice of  partner  is  not  necessarily  related only  to  their 
representative powers, but to their capacity to unite around a common project.
8
 Cf. Guéguen, D., op.cit., p. 132  
After this quick overview on the present lobbying scenery, in Chapter 3 I’ll go through 
the  current  state  of  affairs  in  EU  lobbying  and  interest  representation  at  the 
supranational  level,  addressing  questions  such  as  the  number  of  organisations 
involved, their main strategies and working methods; this part of the work is rooted 
on  an  analysis  of  recent  academic  works  on  lobbying  and  special  interest 
representation.
Later on, I’ll  give a comprehensive photography  of the current rules and practices 
concerning lobbying in the parliamentary institutions of the Member States; this part 
of the thesis is based on a previous working document drawn up by the Directorate 
General  for  Research  (DG  IV),  updated  with  the  help  of  the  Parliamentary 
Documentation Centre of the European Parliament and other sources.
But before moving to that part,  I’ve decided to introduce now two case studies on 
specific interest groups, to analyze in reality how a group works and which results it 
can  reach,  in  the  short  term  or  in  the  medium  run.  The  first  case  is  pretty  
straightforward and concerns an interest group which is the sum of many national 
voices  speaking  altogether  the  language  of  equality  and  non-discrimination.  This 
group is called ILGA Europe.
After  that,  I’ll  go through a case study which is more complex and concerns the 
Information Technology sector, a key EU-arena where lobbyists make converge huge 
financial and political interests.