A lot of campaigning and lobbying in Brussels is like this.
The Standard Operating Model
I [add in name of client/interest] believe in Turtle Worship* [add in name of something suitably random and obscure].
I am manically obsessed about Turtle Worship [add in your pet obsession].
There are many people who agree with me. I’ve met them. We hold our annual meeting inside the phone box outside Harrods, a chat room on the dark web, or an organisation meeting set aside for just this topic. I met one just the other day at a think tank reception on Turtle worship.
[In my imagination,] I know there is widespread support for my faith. How else do you explain the success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie/TV franchise?
I want the Commission to table a legislative proposal that (1) will ban fishing nets that harm Turtles, and (2) impose a 1000% tariff against any 3rd country that does not adopt similar national measures, and (3) deploy NATO’s drones.
You can add the procedure you’d like to use. A delegated act, RPS Measure, an implementing act, or a vote in one month. You choose.
In my imagination, this should be easy to do.
All I need to do is send to a small group of people (more about them in a minute) a library of position papers, perhaps some videos on their LinkedIn, and meet them to share my slightly obsessive interest in turtle worship.
Currently, I need to persuade some officials tasked with preparing the 2026 Work Programme in the Secretary-General and the President’s Cabinet. All I need to do is get the idea mentioned in the State of the Union speech this September – to rapturous applause – and it will be bound to be tabled a few days after the 2026 Work Programme is published in October.
I feel confident that I’ll strike lucky and find a healthy majority of fellow believers in the Commission, and when it comes out the door in the EP and the Council.
So all I need to do is make sure as many people as possible get to hear the case for Turtle Whoship, read the case (ideally in LinkedIn), and get fellow believers to meet the right people.
When it comes out the door, you are bound to meet at least one MEP (or advisor), a minister or official back in the national capitals who shares the same belief. And once you meet one, you know there are more out there.
An Alternative Approach
I found that the standard orating procedure never delivers the success I want.
I define success loosely. Winning the vote, getting the right proposal or decision. I’m looking for the right majority at an appropriate moment to get the ‘ask’ over the winning line.
In the passage of a legislative proposal, there are several interim winning lines you need to get over, before seeing your ask in the OJ. There are about 20 key moments you need to get past, from onto the Work Programme until publication in the OJ. If you fall at any of them, you fail.
There is an alternative model.
You start from the simple idea that people will support you for different reasons. So, you will re-frame your case to garner support.
People are the key decision-makers and influencers on the proposal. On an ordinary legislative proposal, it is around 500 people in the EU 27.
Answer these 10 Questions
The first thing you need to do before going into action is to do your research. If you skip the research at the start, and just start running, you are going to run into a brick wall fast,
Before you go into action, please answer these questions.
- Who is making the decision?
- What interests them?
- Do you know them?
- Do they trust you?
- Do you know if your ask is legal? Do you want to change the Treaty through the back door, ignore the enabling legislation?
- When is the decision going to be made?
- What is your case – evidence and solutions
- Is your case clear to the people making the decision? Does it resonate with them?
- List the 3rd Party support – from experts, celebrities, etc – do you have? Will they speak up for you?
- Do you have the resources to get your ask adopted? People, expertise, time, Euro.
Answering these questions honestly will likely lead to around 80-90% of work stopping before it has really started.
It is better to stop before starting when you are just going to waste scarce resources and goodwill on a mission impossible. You are unlikely to be Ethan Hunt.
You can go ahead on a mission impossible if you inform your client/interest that the chances of success are between nil and low. Please put this in writing and ensure the client/interest acknowledges it as read.
A negative answer to any of the 10 is dangerous. A negative for 4, 5, 9 or 10 is a death knell.
If your pitch is “I want you to ignore the law, and we are turning up a few weeks before the vote, and you should just take our word for it/trust us”, the right thing to do is admit that the chances of success are between 0-5%.
If you don’t have people who have successfully gone through the journey before, and you are starting afresh, the chances that you’ll slip into one of the many pitfalls are all but guaranteed. If you are not trusted, you’re more or less DOA. If you don’t have the right € resources – and studies, evidence, experts coming in – it is not cheap.
If you have no leeway to adapt the message to secure support, you are harming your chances of success. I found more people were interested in Ebola coming into European airport hubs than in the fate of the African great ape. Political support on Blue Fin Tuna quota setting spiked when politicians learned that the fisheries were dominated by the Marseille Mafia and the late Colonel Gaddafi’s family. Greta Scacchi and other celebrities’ photoshoot and media appearances to raise the issue of fisheries discards that helped sway more than a handful of fishing ministers. I’ve had more success highlighting procedural errors to slow down an initiative than addressing the merits of the case.
You can then move to preparing a campaign/lobby plan, commissioning the evidence you will need, adapting your case to speak to different decision makers, and then going out the door and engaing.
Public Campaigns
I’ve not listed public campaigns. They do work. Harnessing widespread ‘public’ support (or the appearance of mass public support) can work. I’ve worked on campaigns that successfully used this.
I’m not keen on them for three reasons:
- It takes time to engineer.
- It takes a lot of € resources to deliver. Resources that don’t exist in the Brussels market.
- It requires a skill set that is hard to find in Brussels.
If you have all three, it can work.
- I like Turtles. I don’t worship them. It is used as an allegory to the wonderful, passionate obsession with a given issue that many people in Brussels carry. Many people seem shocked that you don’t have the same level of obsessive interest in their issue.